IWGA President’s statement

Opening the IWGA Annual General Meeting on Tuesday morning José Perurena, President of the International World Games Association, gave the following statement concerning the AGM of SportAccord on Monday:

"Before I start my speech: Today is not a very nice day for me, because I am not happy with the situation at yesterday's SportAccord Congress. Mr. Vizer is my personal friend. But I am here to represent The World Games. I feel that it is necessary to clarify two or three important points. Leaving aside the discussion about the style, what is more important is whether what was said yesterday is true or untrue.

For the Agenda 2020 of the International Olympic Committee, President Thomas Bach created 14 working groups to develop the activities of the Olympic Movement. At IOC Headquarters they received thousands of proposals from Universities, National Federations, from athletes, and national and international federations, from IOC members and many other organizations. This meant very hard work for the sports department to evaluate such a large number of proposals.

I was a member of two groups, group 3 and group 4. Group4, headed by Franco Carraro, Chairman of the Olympic Program Commission was discussing the procedures for the Olympic program, with its members: Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad, ACNO President, Raffaele Chiulli ARISF President, Gian-Franco Kasper AIOWF President, myself, IWGA President, Francesco Ricci Bitti, ASOIF President and Claudia Bokel, President of the IOC Athletes Commission. This group worked together on the plan for Agenda 2020.

Group 3, headed by Sam Ramsamy, discussed the differentiation of the Olympic Games. We received about 100 documents .There were ten members, five individual experts and five members represented the international federations Patrick Baumann, Basketball CEO, René Fasel, Icehockey President, Julio César Maglione, Swimming President, José Perurena, Canoing President and Marius Vizier,  Judo President. This means that all the documents concerning the plan for Agenda 2020 went through our hands. I just wanted to clarify the situation in terms of  whether there was information available to IFs or not.

In the session of the IWGA Executive Committee yesterday we decided to withdraw our candidate for the position of the executive committee of SportAccord.

Later the assemblies of ASOIF and the AWOIF will make their own decisions. We have to decide whether to resign from SportAccord or not. But it is important for us to follow the opinion of all the federations.

Finally, my proposal is as follows: in November, at the IF Forum we will if necessary have an opportunity to make a decision at an Extraordinary General Meeting. This is for your information. For me it was important for me to clarify what information was available during the process of developing IOC Agenda 2020. "