Post by schlager7 on Sept 27, 2005 7:41:17 GMT -6
Below is FIE President Rene Roche's editorial from the new issue of Escrime. I figured that, with all the discussion of changes to fencing, both planned and already accomplished, folks should read this to get a feel for his thinking.
We should thank President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who warned our Federation, back in 1992, of its possible eviction from the Olympic Games if we failed to carry out certain reforms rapidly. The Singapore vote, confirming our participation in the 2012 Olympic Games, is a great comfort to us and demonstrates that, contrary to certain false allegations made during an unscrupulous voting campaign, our sport is not in danger. However, we should not delude ourselves that there is nothing left to be done, as many sports are coveting a seat at the Olympic table. We will be challenged, as will all the other sports, each Olympic year.
A place at the Games is awarded by a competition mainly based on the ethical values, popularity and media impact of the sport under scrutiny. Our sport enjoys a good educational reputation, deservedly so I believe, but we must preserve it. Let us try hard to retain the very essence of our sport: loyalty, respect of the opponent, moral honesty. I know that it isn’t easy in a world where corruption has become so widespread that it is now appearing on the front pages of newspapers. It is our duty to preserve our sport and I can assure you that we will do so.
The popularity of a sport is directly proportional to the comprehension of its rules. Out of the most popular sports, we find that the ones enjoying the best media coverage are the ones for which the viewer can be the judge. The decisions must be understandable and errors exceptional. Therefore we have to focus on refereeing. We must take the report of the IOC’s Assessment Committee for the Olympic Games into consideration. This report noted that our sport lacks consistency and this is why we thought that eliminating the white lamp in foil fencing was a necessity. The public cannot understand why a non-valid touch can cancel a valid one, to say nothing of the fact that there are three categories of touches in foil fencing (valid, non-valid and white) and not in the other weapons.
Apart from this comprehension problem, there is also the issue of the rules not being enforced properly. How many young fencers were appalled by scandals such as were witnessed recently in Athens ? The damage to our sport brought on by bad or biased refereeing is enormous! This is why we are committed to using video control, which has been made possible by technological evolution. Thanks to this technological progress, we are also able to reduce the blocking time of the lamps and therefore make the referee’s job easier. The more objective our refereeing system, the more unquestionable our place at the Games is.
Our media impact depends on our popularity but also on our universal appeal. Certain sports, like baseball and softball, were removed from the 2012 programme. I think that their lack of universal appeal is certainly the main reason for this elimination. Fortunately, the number of federations affiliated with the FIE has increased by 50 % compared with our situation 12 years ago. There are still a lot of countries where our sport is being played but who are unfortunately not yet members of the International Fencing Federation. Our goal is to increase affiliations by at least 10 members by the end of 2006.
Finally, we can now use the Internet to advertise our sport. We already used it during the Cadet and Junior World Championships by broadcasting video images on the FIE site. But it was only a trial run. A daily summary will be available on our federation’s web site during the Senior World Championships in Leipzig.
The report of the IOC’s assessment committee provided us with very useful information for the completion of the plan of action we started 12 years ago. I wish to thank President Jacques Rogge for this initiative enabling us to strengthen our development programme that has already set world fencing “on the go”.
René Roch
We should thank President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who warned our Federation, back in 1992, of its possible eviction from the Olympic Games if we failed to carry out certain reforms rapidly. The Singapore vote, confirming our participation in the 2012 Olympic Games, is a great comfort to us and demonstrates that, contrary to certain false allegations made during an unscrupulous voting campaign, our sport is not in danger. However, we should not delude ourselves that there is nothing left to be done, as many sports are coveting a seat at the Olympic table. We will be challenged, as will all the other sports, each Olympic year.
A place at the Games is awarded by a competition mainly based on the ethical values, popularity and media impact of the sport under scrutiny. Our sport enjoys a good educational reputation, deservedly so I believe, but we must preserve it. Let us try hard to retain the very essence of our sport: loyalty, respect of the opponent, moral honesty. I know that it isn’t easy in a world where corruption has become so widespread that it is now appearing on the front pages of newspapers. It is our duty to preserve our sport and I can assure you that we will do so.
The popularity of a sport is directly proportional to the comprehension of its rules. Out of the most popular sports, we find that the ones enjoying the best media coverage are the ones for which the viewer can be the judge. The decisions must be understandable and errors exceptional. Therefore we have to focus on refereeing. We must take the report of the IOC’s Assessment Committee for the Olympic Games into consideration. This report noted that our sport lacks consistency and this is why we thought that eliminating the white lamp in foil fencing was a necessity. The public cannot understand why a non-valid touch can cancel a valid one, to say nothing of the fact that there are three categories of touches in foil fencing (valid, non-valid and white) and not in the other weapons.
Apart from this comprehension problem, there is also the issue of the rules not being enforced properly. How many young fencers were appalled by scandals such as were witnessed recently in Athens ? The damage to our sport brought on by bad or biased refereeing is enormous! This is why we are committed to using video control, which has been made possible by technological evolution. Thanks to this technological progress, we are also able to reduce the blocking time of the lamps and therefore make the referee’s job easier. The more objective our refereeing system, the more unquestionable our place at the Games is.
Our media impact depends on our popularity but also on our universal appeal. Certain sports, like baseball and softball, were removed from the 2012 programme. I think that their lack of universal appeal is certainly the main reason for this elimination. Fortunately, the number of federations affiliated with the FIE has increased by 50 % compared with our situation 12 years ago. There are still a lot of countries where our sport is being played but who are unfortunately not yet members of the International Fencing Federation. Our goal is to increase affiliations by at least 10 members by the end of 2006.
Finally, we can now use the Internet to advertise our sport. We already used it during the Cadet and Junior World Championships by broadcasting video images on the FIE site. But it was only a trial run. A daily summary will be available on our federation’s web site during the Senior World Championships in Leipzig.
The report of the IOC’s assessment committee provided us with very useful information for the completion of the plan of action we started 12 years ago. I wish to thank President Jacques Rogge for this initiative enabling us to strengthen our development programme that has already set world fencing “on the go”.
René Roch