A new direction
Kim Andersen was elected president of World Sailing, the international sailing federation, for a 4-year term. The vote took place at its annual conference in Barcelona on 13 November 2016. At the same time, 7 other vice-presidents were elected by the representatives of the national federations. It is about 5 men and 2 women who will constitute the executive committee:
- Jan Dawson (NZL)
- Torben Grael (BRA)
- Gary Jobson (USA)
- Quanhai Li (CHN)
- W Scott Perry (URU)
- Ana Sanchez (ESP)
- Nadine Stegenwalner (GER)
We can note the re-election of the American, Chinese and Uruguayan graduates.
For a more popular sail
Elected against the outgoing Carlo Croce, candidate for a second term and Paul Henderson, already president of the ISAF between 1978 and 1994, the Danish Kim Andersen is a renewal. At 59 years of age, he was also the youngest of the contenders.
He had focused his candidate program on democratizing and rejuvenating sailing around the world. He wants to rely on new media such as windsurfing or kiteboarding, but also offshore racing, which is not at the heart of World Sailing's concerns today.
Anything new at the Olympics?
Kim Andersen had explained during the campaign that he wanted to use the Olympic Games to increase the popularity of sailing in the world and create a virtuous circle leading to new memberships in national federations. While the General Assembly has chosen to propose to the IOC for Tokyo 2020 the same 10 supports as in Rio, a discussion must open for an 11th Olympic sailboat. Let us bet that the new president will make it an important part of his new strategy.
For more information on Kim Andersen's career, see our previous article published during the campaign.
