All was going really well until........

All was going really well at the WCF Annual Assembly today and at 1220 we had reached the end of the elections and were looking forward to the last couple of agenda items. An hour later we were still there!!!!

But more of that later!!

And first of all let's go back to last night and the Swiss Curling Association's reception when Kate Caithness, WCF President, received a couple of gifts from the SCA - the first was, unsurprisingly, a cow bell and the second was a bar of Toblerone - except this bar weighed 4.5 KILOS!!

So this morning's first task was to give the Toblerone to Bruno Schallenberg chair of the organising committee together with a hammer so that he could smash the bar down into smaller pieces for the delegates to share at the coffee break.

Onto the main business, and with the following countries being represented, there were 48 representatives present from 29 countries carrying 77 votes and a further 16 proxies being carried representing 22 votes - a total of 99 votes available. Plus representatives of 2 provisional members were present.

Scotland, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Netherland, New Zealand, Norway, Russsia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, USA who are all full members and Luxembourg and Chinese Taipei who are provisional members.

Proxies were being carried for representatives of Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Ireland, Wales, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, New Zealand, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey, USA.

The main news about next season's competitions that had not been announced before was that the World Seniors and World Mixed Doubles would both be held in Canada in 2013 between the 13th and 20th April. No venue as yet as contract still being negotiated.

When it came to the Board elections Kate Caithness was unopposed as President, Andy Anderson was unopposed as Finance Director and Bent Ramsfjell of Norway was elected Vice President in a straight fight between him and Celal Cuneyt Isgor of Turkey.

The current WCF Constitution gives automatic places on the Board to Scotland, Canada and the USA and also has a requirement for there to be one "missing gender" - i.e as most of the time the candidates are male, the "missing gender" is female. Kate Caithness fulfilled the Scotland and "missing gender" roles while Andy Anderson is from the USA. There were 5 nominations for Members - at - Large, but ,as one of these was Graham Prouse of Canada, he was automatically elected to the Board. The other 4 nominations had to be reduced to 3 and unusually for the WCF elections each position was filled at the first ballot as follows: Leif Ohman (Sweden), Young C. Kim (Korea) and Toyokazu Ogawa (Japan).The unfortunate unsuccessful nominee was Niels Larsen of Denmark. For the first time there will be 2 Asians on the WCF Board and none from Central Europe following the resignation of Patrick Hurlimnann of Switzerland.

So there we were at 1220 with just the acceptrance of new Member Associations to be carried out - Mongolia were unanimously accepted but then, in a surprise to most of the delegates, the application of the Kosovo Curling Federation was announced. We were also told that a letter of protest had been received from Serbia and after the presentation from Kosovo, the representative of Serbia, Dara Gravara-Stojaovic made a passioned plea that Kosovo should not be admitted as this was contrary to UN, IOC and evenWCF constitutions!! 

Graham Prouse had been asked to check through various documents and had concluded that nothing in the WCF Constitution precluded Kosovo's acceptance. However a motion, proposed by Canada and seconded by Scotland, to put the application on the table at the WCF Congress in October was passed as an amendment to the motion from Germany and seconded by France that Kosovo should be accepted!! Whatever the ins and outs of the political situation this is a disappointing situation which, as Kate Caithness passionately indicated in her final remarks, goes against the whole 'Spirit of Curling'. We shall see what transpires at Turnberry in October.

After the meeting  it was off to the arena to see a disappointing play-off when the Kiwi dream finally died at the end of a 2-10 defeat by Sweden. 

This is my last blog from Basel as I return tomorrow in order to spend time at home before I go off to the World Seniors in Taarnby where I will be continuing with the daily blogs. 

Finally the first of my pictures from here which I have managed to access for this blog.They do say that some people come to worship their idols at the World Championships and here is the proof !!!

 

Basel belongs to New Zealand

No it is not a delayed April Fool - I was there and I saw Glenn Howard play at just 67% (allegedly) and lose at an extra end to Peter de Boer and his Kiwi team. Cue pandemonium in the arena as Peter's last stone tapped Canada's red one out of the shot position. With Tom Brewster and Scotland having just qualified in second place it was a good half hour for all the Scots in the arena.

I think I have probably missed out a meeting or two in my reports - so where was I - Wednesday morning we found out that the WCF have recently received a further $5million form the IOC and currently have $16m in the bank!! And there was good news for those who curse and swear that they cannot get webstreaming of the games from Canada on You Tube - this may change very soon and next season we should be able to see as much curling as we want on the internet!! So fingers crossed that You Tube can get agreement from the broadcasters to show web streaming in competition to TV broadcasts.

Today was the European Curling Federation semi-annual general meeting and after the regular business of the meeting was done, the main discussion under any other business was the future of the ECF. The ECF Board had met and discussed their options and now asked the members what they wanted. It was disappointing that there were no options provided by the Board for the members to consider and the answers to many of the questions that were put were, in one person's words, wishy-washy.

It is not clear whether there is a reason for the ECF to exist if the WCF's proposals for a European Commission come to fruition - in the words of one delegate should it be "put into a sleeping bag" to be resurrected if something should happen to the WCF or should it be consigned to the annals of history? With a very limited budget from its Member Associations there is little it can do without any other financial input and in all my years at ECF meetings I have never seen any plans for development of the sport for example. The ECF exists to run the European Championships, but even that is very much beholden to the resources of the WCF.

I personally find it difficult to justify to my members that the ECA pays a 500 Euro subscription to the ECF and then entry fees of 500 Euros for the Mixed Championships and 700 Euros for each team at the European Championships - a total of 2400 Euros when the total ECA subscription income is just over £3000. There are many more ways I would like to spend that 2400 Euros to help develop the sport in England especially when the members are usually set against even a modest increase in their ECA subscription of £25!! However I was told that the decision on the ECF should not just be about the money side - but with no development plans from the ECF or any other ideas on how our money can be spent it is difficult to see what else I can prioritise in my decision about the future of the ECF.

Anyway enough for tonight. WCF Annual General Assembly tomorrow with elections to follow - could be a long one!!

Basel - the future of the WCF?

When the International Curling Federation was formed in 1966 its 7 member associations were from countries where curling was a well-established mature sport, played competitively and recreationally. The 7 were Canada, Scotland, USA, France, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway. Germany joined in 1967 and then Denmark and England in 1971 and Italy in 1972. The Dutch followed in 1975, Luxembourg in 1976, Finland in 1979 and Wales and Austria in 1982. The first non European / North American member was Japan in 1985 with Australia following shortly after in 1986.

When the drive to get Olympic recognition was at its height, led by Gunther Hummelt, a number of other member associations were signed up as members to ensure that the WCF, as it had then become, was fully compliant with International Olympic Committee rules. Countries like the US Virgin Islands (1991) or Liechtenstein (1991) have played little or no part in WCF affairs since they were admitted although others have developed into World curling power, such as Korea (1994), Czech Republic (1990) and Russia (1992).

By the end of the last century the total number of Member Associations had risen to 32 and since curling has become a recognised Olympic sport there have been a further 16 Member Associations added to the list. Some have been and gone (e.g. Mexico), while others have been, gone and come back again (Romania, Kazakhstan). It is my understanding that we may see Mongolia added to the list this week or very shortly.

All of this makes the WCF and its Member Associations a totally different animal to that which started life 46 years ago - it is reaching maturity you could say. The recent confrontation between the WCF and the European Curling Federation when led by Andrew Ferguson-Smith saw many begin to question how curling was being governed and a Governance Commission was set up by the WCF, chaired by Board Member Graham Prouse from Canada with members John Anderson (AUS), Laura Lochanski (CAN), Willie Nicoll (SCO), Bent Ramsfjell (NOR), Olli Rissanen (FIN), Gerrit-Jan Scholten (NED) and Colin Grahamslaw (WCF).

Their first comprehensive report on their findings was made to Member Associations at the Open Meeting yesterday with a further follow-up session during today's Open Meeting.

Their Mission Statement for the Commission was / is : "To create and maintain a robust organisation which maximises the potential of curling". They have set out what the requirements are for an enhanced Governance structure and also the goals for that Improved Governance Structure as follows:

Requirements:

• be efficient and effective
• ensure accountability
•  respect tradition while embracing progress
• take account of volunteer Board capacity
• ensure Member engagement and sustainability
• minimise risks on the organisation and its people
• describe clear lines of authorities and responsibilities
• empower those delivering the operational outcomes
• encompass today's best business practices
• avoid non-conformance with the constitution

Goals:

• a democratic organisation
• strong foundations in place which can grow with the sport
• solid and transparent finances
• good succession planning
• a dynamic election process which attracts quality people
• influence from the athletes
• the right person in the right job
• a professional and efficient staff empowered by the Board
• Board remains responsible for sound operation of the organisation

 So once you get around the management-speak, just what are its recommendations and how did it get to them?

Two benchmarking exercises were carried out comparing the WCF constitution, firstly to other International Federation constitutions and secondly to other related organisations including a number of Member Association constitutions. Best practice in other sport organisations and non profit making bodies was investigated, IOC policy had to be considered and there are also issues around Swiss Law since the WCF Head Office is based in Switzerland for tax purposes (note the operational HQ are of course in Perth).

The main recommendations are as follows (though note that this is still very much work in progress and a new constitution is not going to be approved until the WCF Congress in 2013).

Recommended that the WCF should be structured on a continental zone basis, initially Europe / the Americas / Pacific Asia with the provision to increase the number of continental zones or to amalgamate where appropriate as determined by the General Assembly.

The Board structure would be President, 3 Continental Vice Presidents and 4-6 directors (initially 4). The President would be elected for a 4 year term at the General Assembly (GA) after the Olympics, one of the three VPs would be elected at the 2nd, 3rd and 4th GAs following the Olympics so that they would not all go off the Board at the same time. An important proposal is that the Continental VPs would be elected "at large", that is not just by the MAs from that Continent - so even if the members of a continent favoured one particular person it would be possible for the other continents to vote a different person as the VP.

A very important change would be that no MA would have a guaranteed place on the Board. At the moment Scotland, USA and Canada are guaranteed a place and this would mark a big shift of power from the founding members to others. There would be a minimum of 2 from each gender - currently there has to be one female member of the Board. Candidates for the Board would have to be nominated by their MA but perhaps controversially they would not be required to have attended a WCF GA as an International Representative, opening the door for candidates from outside curling being brought into the Board.

Two other recommendations requiring a bit more thought are that successful candidates for the WCF Board should not be simultaneously sitting on their MA Board - to avoid a conflict of interest but not really workable in smaller countries, and whether or not there should be a maximum age for appointment to the Board. Directors or VPs would be able to sit for a total of 3 x 4 year terms with an additional 3 x 4 years if they became President - so in theory a Board member could be there for 24 years!!

Another big issue still being discussed is how to allocate votes to MAs - currently the system is weighted such that the bigger MAs get more votes. Perhaps uniquely among sport, the MA with the largest number of curlers (Canada) has 90% of the reported curlers in the World while the 5 MAs with the largest number of curlers have a combined 96% of the reported curlers.

Alternative options which could be considered are one MA,one vote (which gives 43 out of 48 votes to the MAs with an aggregate of 4% of the curlers), or the number of votes directly proportional to number of reported curlers (which gives Canada a whole lot of voting power!!). I think the current system will survive but with more refined recording of the number of curlers in each country. This will probably mean changing the current thresholds for the different weighting of votes to recognise the changes in the growth of curling, a way being devised of verifying the number of curlers reported and a standard definition of what a reported curler is.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the proposals and one which could change the whole scene of European curling is the idea that there would be 3 Continental Commissions set up. These bodies would be chaired by the respective continental VP and would be structured as follows: each Continental Commission would be made up of one representative of each MA in that zone, and within each Continental Commission the Members could decide to set up smaller groups to organise the work of the commission, look after specific projects or to carry out specific roles identified by the commission as needing additional attention.

The Continental Commissions would have the following roles: hold an annual meeting of MAs to discuss matters of interest / relevance to that zone; provide a channel of feedback to the Board through the VP; develop specific projects which can be promoted to the WCF Board for funding and staff support - e.g. other competitions, regional courses etc, and at the request of the WCF Board set up sub groups for specific projects. Also the Commissions would take decisions on matters allocated to it by the WCF Board or GA; support projects being delivered in that zone, and the VP would have a leading role in ceremonies at any Championships within that zone.

And then comes the paragraph which should make tomorrow's European Curling Federation meeting fairly exciting:

THE ROLES OF THE CONTINENTAL COMMISSIONS COULD ESSENTIALLY BECOME WHAT HAS TYPICALLY TAKEN PLACE WITHIN THE EUROPEAN CURLING FEDERATION AND THE PACIFIC ASIA CURLING FEDERATION, SHOULD THE MEMBERS OF THOSE ORGANISATIONS DETERMINE THAT THERE IS NO LONGER A NEED FOR THE FEDERATIONS TO CONTINUE !!! SHOULD THESE ORGANISATIONS CHOOSE TO CONTINUE THE CONTINENTAL COMMISSIONS WOULD STILL EXIST BUT WOULD AVOID DUPLICATED EFFORT.

The WCF has already started discussions with the ECF about the organisation of future European Championships and when the question was asked at today's meeting about who held the rights to those Championships there was a difference of opinion between the WCF and the ECF!!

So tomorrow the members of the ECF will be asked to give their views on the future of the Federation if the WCF takes over running the Championships and if the Continental Commission system is approved when the new WCF constitution becomes adopted.It could mean that the AGM of the ECF in Karlstad in December could be its last, either for ever or until a new ECF is resurrected in the future.

Personally I find it difficult to see where the ECF can go from here. If the European Championships are organised by the WCF I can see no real reason for the ECF to exist unless it can change its direction, but for a federation covering 38 countries and with a budget of tens of thousands of Euros only, it is difficult to see what it can do without bankrupting its own member associations.

Sorry this has been so long but there was a lot to tell - look out for more tomorrow from the ECF meeting.

Basel - Edition 3b

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin........

Today was the first day of the WCF Open Meetings held here in Basel - the last time that there will be such meetings at this time of year as the new system will have them at the Annual Congress to be held in October each year. There will still be the opportunity for Member Associations (MA) to call a Semi-Annual meeting if they feel it is necessary but the norm would be just the one set of meetings each year.

Today's meeting started off fairly easily with a short presentation on rules and competitions from Keith Wendorf:

There will be no rule changes before the Sochi Olympics in 2014 but a draft questionnaire has been developed for players and others to comment on a number of issues for consideration after that. The questionnaire has been piloted with the players and will be mounted on the WCF website for responses to be made between May and September. The main topics are: length of the game; timing of the game; playoff system; free guard zone; tie break games, and time-outs.

There was a discussion about the need for official accreditation to be available for an eighth person at major Championships - currently 7 are provided for the 5 players, the team coach and another team official. Basically the eighth person would normally be a medical or fitness person but it would all depend on the facilities available at venues. 

And the final point on the competition side was that, as confirmed in Moscow, the current system of qualification for World Championships would remain but that the WCF would seek to control their own qualification events, e.g the European Championships - and this would have further implications for the European Curling Federation. The working groupon World Qualification had now been disbanded.

The next item was a report back from the Mixed Doubles Working Group. Having decided in Champery in 2010 not to apply for official inclusion of MD at the Olympics, this group had been set up to see how the discipline could be taken forward.

Colin Grahamslaw of the WCF had led the commission with other members being Greg Stremlaw (Canada), Georgy Nagy (Hungary), Edith Loudon (Scotland) and Peter Becker (New Zealand).

They had initially considered other alternatives to an additional discipline for the Olympics - e.g mixed, singles / hot shots, skins but confirmed that MD seemed to be the best one to promote. It would provide an extra medal, would be gender balanced, would require few additional athletes, no extra facilities and would enable 16 nations to compete and remain in the same time frame - an important factor for the Olympic Games.

A questionnaire to all MAs had brought 25 responses, 21 of them hosted or planned to host Championships which ranged in entry numbers from 2 to 35 pairs (Italy)!!

The players who were interviewed loved it (though they tended to be those already playing it!!) with a few points about rules concerning the umpires placing the stones at the start of the end (why not let the players do it), stones thrown out of order (not clear what the options were), and the use of the stabiliser (which if used for delivery tended to chucked aside at the end of the slide to pick up a brush and then left for the other team to pick up!!. Time clocks were seen as vital. 

There was a positive feedback from the press interviewed but they needed to be told more about the intricacies of the game and some well known faces were needed to be seen participating.

So the first action was to try and get more nations to hold Championships and send teams to World Championships to get over the requirement that over 50% of the MAs had to hold Championships to help Olympic approval. The idea was mooted about giving a grant to teams participating in World Championships, either specifically for travel or for accommodation or just a general grant for each MA to use as they saw fit.

Secondly an education pack was being put together for the media and it was also decided that live webstreaming is a must – this will happen from Erzurum in April and in 2013 there will be TV broadcasting from theWMDCC.(Venue will be announced on Friday).

On reflection I have decided that my report on the rest of the meeting, which discussed the work of the Governance Commission will have to wait until tomorrow as otherwise it will make War and Peace look like a paperback novelet.

So good night from Basel for this evening.

 

Basel Edition 3a

There is so much to tell from Basel today that I think we had better divide it into 2 - I will do the interesting stuff first and later, after I have had my dinner and maybe a glass or two of wine, I shall try and guide you through the happenings at the first of the WCF Open Meetings today.

On the ice I went to see the afternoon session and in particular my first look at Canada, the USA, Germany and France. The US game against Norway is quickly dealt with as Norway opened up a 5-1 lead which was never really threatened by the inexperienced US side.

On the next sheet it looked as though New Zealand were also heading for an early bath as after two blank ends Germany scored a 3 and a 2 to be well in control. Then the fightback began and when the German skip failed to force Peter de Boer to play his last stone it capped an incredible 8-6 win for the Kiwis who are now on 3 wins and 3 losses.

Canada v Denmark was a close game but I did see Glenn Howard make a mistake!!! However some later great shotmaking by the Canadians gave them their seventh win in a row and, with Sweden losing heavily to the USA this morning, they are now the only undefeated team.

While the Scots from down under celebrated, the home Scots suffered a sad defeat at the hands of the French. All looked good early on but after Tony Angiboust saved his team from losing a 4 at the 5th end it all seemed to become very difficult for Tom Brewster and his team. I think Tom could possibly have drawn with his last shot to force the extra end but he went for the win and his angled raised take-out missed narrowly to  drop the team down to 2 losses and into a clear 4th place in the standings.

Spotted in the crowd today were Eve Muirhead and her team who have come over to add some Scottish support while today has also seen the arrival of Bruce Crawford and the other WCF Representatives from Scotland.

An interesting cameo was the sight of former Scottish Head Coach, Derek Brown, chatting to Eve and others as he is here in his role as USA Head Coach.

Hopefully more later - but don't expect an easy read!!

Basel - Edition 2

I saw a shop in Basel today called "Basil"!!!!

Simple things etc etc.....

But at least my mind was awake - I have no idea what the French team were thinking in the last end of their game against New Zealand today when they called a coach-interaction with less than 2 minutes on their clock when they still had 2 stones to play. Well actually I probably do know what they were thinking - they were thinking that the old time-out rules still applied and the clock would stop for a minute while they talked to their coach but of course this year the clock starts again when the coach arrives at the side of the ice.

In the end they ran out of time and handed the New Zealanders their second win of the competition.

Scotland had a great game against Switzerland who had totally turned around their line up with fourth player., Tony Mueller dropping to lead and their young alternate, Benoit Schwartz coming in to throw last stones. Benoit won the World Junior Championship in 2010 and started off in great style with some super shots to keep Switzerland in the game but in the end the pressure maybe became too much as he went to the hack to play his last stone he had just 20 seconds on the clock and perhaps was a little rushed as he wrecked on a guard as he tried to tap Tom Brewster's shot out to win the game. So a close win for Scotland and they are now 4-1 and well within the top 4 placings. Canada and Sweden remained unbeaten after 4 and as I write are on the ice to play their fifth game.

And still the sun shines!!!

Apologies also for the lack of photos - my technology is not up to it out here and I will try and add a picture blog once I get back home!!

Basel - edition1

In spite of the gorgeous spring weather I was drawn into the arena to watch this afternoon's games at the St.Jakobshalle and what a treat we had - unless you were Scottish.The first thing to notice was that, for a World Championships in Europe and without Canada on the ice, it was actually quite busy and noisy. We had Scottish and Swiss fans in full voice as well as the Musketeers from Edinburgh supporting Peter de Boer and the New Zealand team.

Scotland got off to a bad start when they lost the last stone draw to decide the hammer, and then a couple of great shots from the Danish skip, Rasmus Stjerne, won them a 3 at the first end. After 3 ends it was 5-1 to Denmark and it looked that the game could be over early, but all credit to Tom Brewster and team, they took the game to the last end, although by that time they were looking for a 3 to tie it all up.

But the performance of the session came from New Zealand. Against Thomas Ulsrud's European Champions from Norway they played superb stuff with Peter de Boer shooting 93% as the Kiwis won 7-4. In their last game Peter had played 53% and so it was a sterling comeback to produce a series of great shots and have Norway struggling all through the game to hang on to the New Zealanders coat-tails. Elsewhere the Czechs shocked the home team and Sweden held on to win against a Chinese team who were coming back from being 0-6 down.

Of course this was only a snapshot of the games played so far as by the end of today all the teams will have played 3 games. Of the 4 teams that have already played 3 games none are undefeated with Scotland and Denmark on 2-1 and New Zealand and Norway on 1-2. Tonight Canada and Sweden will try and go clear at the top of the table as they have both so far played 2 and won 2. Canada play the winless USA and Sweden play the Czech Republic.

Elsewhere there have been comments about the sterility of tactics in the modern game with it being too predictable. That was reflected at the start of today's session when all 4 first stones were top of the 4 foot and all the next stones were corner guards, but each game then took on a character of its own and all developed along different lines.

One little incident showed that even top players can get it wrong. It was Czech Republic against Switzerland and it was all tied at 2-2. Both sides had a stone in the 12 foot and it appeared that the Czechs were possibly lying shot as the Swiss appeared to call for a split on their own stone to make a 2 out of it rather than assuming they were lying shot and drawing for what might after all just be 1. The shot was played a bit heavy and the split was missed at which point the Czech third kicked his own stone away - but this was while the Swiss third was still looking at his own stone to see if it was shot or not and had not conceded the shot to the Czechs!! So it was one to the Swiss and a 3-2 lead but that was in fact the last shot they scored!!!