President's Letter to Delegates and Committee Chairmen 2005-2

April 10th, 2005

Dear Friends,

IGC PLENARY MEETING

It is now a month since our very successful Plenary meeting. It was great to see so many of you there despite the weather and the travel disruptions.
The key points from the meeting have been available on the IGC website for a while now, and Peter Eriksen has sent the Minutes to the FAI Office for inclusion on the website.

I, for one, greatly enjoyed the presentations from Wolfgang Weinreich and Klaus Ohlmann and my thanks to each of them. Wolfgang and Klaus both threw out challenges for us, the Plenary, to consider regarding the future of the sport and the control of world records. Wolfgang has kindly consented to his keynote speech being made available publicly and it has been posted on the website, but, more importantly, it is attached to this newsletter.

I ask each and every one of you to pass this speech on to your national President and also to the editor of your national magazine.

While Wolfgang has stated that there are a number of initiatives that the “IGC can do” may I plagiarise FAI Secretary General Max Bishop’s comment and remind you that: "You are IGC!"

My thanks also to Oliver Rennert, for providing the update on the OLC developments, and to Joerg Stieber, for the COTS presentation. Again, both presentations provided food for thought.

We have a very strong Bureau and while I am sorry that Dick Bradley has stood down from the Bureau I am very pleased that he has agreed to remain the IGC Treasurer. I am also very pleased to welcome Arild Solbakken to the Bureau. The establishment of the Business Development Group and a Communication Strategy are now the top priorities for the Bureau.

My congratulations to those NAC’s that have been awarded World Championship and European Championship events in 2007 and 2008. I look forward to strong and healthy competitions at each of these events.

FAI CENTENARY 2005

May I remind you that the Northern hemisphere period for submission of flights for the IGC contribution to the FAI Centenary is July 9th to July 24th. To ensure that this on line contest is a success we all have a responsibility to promote it in our own country, on the Website of our NAC or Federation and in our Gliding Magazines.

IGC RANKING LIST

The IGC Ranking list is one of our key products. The IGC competitions over the last season have been included and your pilots should be seeing their names there. If they are not they need to ask the competition organisers why the results are not there. It’s great to see a fellow Kiwi at the top of the list – but is there no one else out there who can outperform him?

It is also boring to have only names and competition results available on the ranking list. This is a list that the media and the public access – and it is the most popular IGC web page by a factor of 20. I ask you to please encourage your pilots to insist that competition organisers provide photos and biographical information for the list.

2006 PLENARY MEETING

The discussion on strategic issues this year has provided us, the Bureau, with useful thoughts and ideas on how to develop a sound strategic plan to protect and develop our sport. For 2006 we propose to have a similar format with a keynote speech and discussion time on a specific topic on the Friday afternoon.

There are 46 countries that have Delegates to the IGC. This year we had representation from 34 countries actually at the meeting. In 2006 I would like to see at least 40 countries attending the Plenary meeting and the Bureau will see what it can do to provide assistance to those who routinely do not attend.

I am also going to issue an invitation to every national gliding President to attend the meeting in Lausanne in 2006.

I believe that this is critical for us to be able to develop our battle plans to ensure the survival of our sport. The Presidents hold the political strings in each country and I believe that we need them to come together in Lausanne to help us – IGC – to understand exactly what we can do on the international scene to help each national gliding body, and for them to understand what they can do to help us – IGC.

Take care and safe flying.

Bob Henderson

President, IGC

April 10th, 2005