| The growth of sports
calls for professional action IPC Sport Department is in Place |
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| The growth of sports
calls for professional action IPC Sport Department is in Place |
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| The IPC Headquarters Sport
Department was initiated May 1, when Christian Lillieroos was hired as the Director of
Sport, with the challenging task to build up the Sport Department. Nearly all Sports have
documented unprecedented growth in numbers of athletes, compe-titions, nations widely
practising the Sport, and regional distribution. It is a great evolution, and at last we
have started to reap the benefits from the successful past Paralympic Games. The Sport Department The Technical Officer, Carol Mushett, works out of Atlanta, USA, at Georgia State University (GSU). IPC is graetful to the GSU for the re-sources given to Carol for the work of IPC. All this is now slowly transferred to the IPC Head-quarters. Carol is looking forward to, as she is stating, „get her life back". |
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| Compared to the IOC sport administration the most important difference within IPC are the 13 IPC Championship Sports, of which IPC has total governance. In the IOC, 66 independent International Sport Federations are recognised. Some of them have up to 50 people as office staff. IPC has four sports that have similar structures: Tennis, Wheelchair Basketball, Sailing, and Volleyball. They have their own constitution, national membership and in most cases their own office and staff. Tennis, for example, has over 40 major tournaments per year on their NEC tour. |  |
| The 13 Championship sports under the IPC umbrella have their secretariat at the IPC Headquarters in Bonn like all other IPC committees have. In the IPC organisational chart, the Sport Council appears as one committee as the other committees, making it look as they all would have the same workload. In reality, they are 15 different IPC committees! The Sport Council (which is twice the size of the IPC Executive committee) is the committee that works with the Paralympic Summer and Winter Games issues together with the four Independent sports and the six IOSD sports, i.e. Wheelchair Fencing and Wheelchair Rugby (ISMWSF), Goalball and Judo (IBSA) as well as Soccer and Boccia (CP-ISRA). The other 13 committees (see box) are the Championship sports that are part of the Paralympic Games (except Bowls), but are also organising the IPC World Championships, Regional championships and sanctioned invitational tournaments. This can for some sports be as many as 28 tournaments in a year, and IPC has over 100 Championship tournaments sanctioned in a year. Powerlifting is now recognised as having the most widespread programme with 113 nations widely practising Powerlifting and more than 2.500 athletes on their ranking-list, and this is mostly thanks to the chairman Pol Wautermartens’ excellent full-time volunteer management. |  |
| Future Plans The guide for planning the future is the Mission Statement for the Sports Technical Department. The IPC Sport Technical Department will promote elite competition and coordinate Paralympic Sport through an athlete centred, sport specific model which recognises the diverse delivery systems serving athletes with disabilities and member nations. The focus of the Sport Technical Department includes:
With the widespread growth within the Sports, the demand far exceeds the current resources of the volunteer structure. This gap continues to increase and presents a significant and complex challenge to the organisation. Therefore future Sport Department staffing will focus on the facilitation and support of Sport Services. Christian Lillieroos, Director of Sport |
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| Sports CalendarThe
Technical Officer communicated with the relevant IOSDs, sports chairpersons and regions to
develop a cycle of major events in order to avoid conflicts of dates. There appears to be
a high level of commitment to solve these problems and to promote growth for the future,
thus allowing athletes maximum competitive opportunities.
However, this task will remain challenging. The Sports Council Management Committee and the IOSD technical officers have concluded that a letter of agreement will be developed in order to improve the co-ordination of the competition calendar. Major events in 2000: January 24 – February 2, Crans Montana/Antère (Switzerland): World Ski Championships, Alpine and NordicMarch 20 – 26, Salt Lake City (USA): World Ice Sledge Championships and Short Track Ice Racing Word Cup October 18 – 29, Sydney (Australia): Paralympic Summer Games |
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Christian Lillieroos, | |
| the new IPC Director of Sport, has a strong background in table tennis: He coached disabled and non-disabled teams in Sweden, Canada, the United States and Mexico. He attended several Paralympic Games and was Assistant Competition Manager Table Tennis for the 1996 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Atlanta. From 1996 to 1999, he was the chairman of the IPC table tennis committee. He was the technical delegate for the 1998 Table Tennis World Championships in France and other international tournaments. Christian originally comes from Sweden and his professional goal is "to develop and promote disabled sports throughout the world". | Interns
wanted! The IPC Sport Department has
initiated an internship-training programme at the Headquarters in Bonn. So far, three
interns have taken part. The department is calling for international applicants for the
next term that will start in January 2000. |
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