65th IPC Plenary - Varshets, Bulgaria - Day 5 1st February

Final day of the Plenary - and it's snowing!

Links to previous days reports and the delegates pictures are at the foot of the page.

08.50hrs: 1st February 2015

The final day of the Plenary and the Delegates - albeit reduced in numbers - are gathering in the Conference Hall with a view to completing the agenda by lunchtime.

09.00 hrs:  Graeme welcomed everyone and started the meeting by showing a short Video produced by SkydiveTV to showcase their work and asking IPC/FAI to work together to promote our events.  If the delegates agree Graeme asks that the Plenary give the Bureau authority to continue to work with SkydiveTV - there was a question from Exi Hoenle and Ron Miasnikov regarding financing and the exclusive rights.  Susanne then commented from the FAI - "take care if you expect it to be self-funding and exclusivity is something to pay attention to".  Kirk Verner spoke about working with SkydiveTV at the American Nationals but would also be concerned with exclusivity.  

The Plenary gave the Bureau unanimous support to continue working with SkydiveTV and the FAI.

As a consequence of one or two delegates having to leave the Plenary due to other commitment, Markus took a roll call of those delegates present and the proxies.

Susanne took the opportunity to explain the voting procedures with reference to Absolute Majority – Simple Majority – Pleural Majority.

Graeme put it to the Plenary that we work on a Simple Majority where people vote either Yes or No and if they choose to abstain their vote will not be counted. The Plenary agreed with this way all voting would be counted.  This meant that the last vote taken the evening before and defeated under the interpretation of Susanne had in fact been passed.

Buzz then returned to the Rules and Regulations Working Group report which did not finish last night. The vote taken at the end of the meeting was clarified in the just agreed interpretation of a simple majority – in other words there had been 16 votes cast in support of the rule change and 11 against, and so this rule change was passed.

Buzz then asked that there be a block vote on the proposals on the General Section. Passed with a majority.

The Plenary then voted on adopting the revised General Section effective for our activities as of March 1st 2015 and not wait until the final date for approval of the 1st January.2016. Voted on and passed.

Next, with the proposed changes to the Internal Regulations to the Bureau election procedure, and this had been discussed at length, Buzz then went on to explain that for changes to IPC Internal Regulations approval required a 2/3rds majority.

Markus then announced the result of the Roll Call, namely 25 delegates present, 9 proxies giving a total of 34 votes. Consequently it followed that the Simple Majority was 18 and a 2/3rds majority is equated to 23.

The first part to vote that Candidates submit a CV in advance. The proposal was lost on the vote.

The second part was relating to the proposal re proxy votes. The proposal was lost on the vote.

The next proposal related to any changes to committees, and the proposal is that Committee Chairs may make changes to their committees but they must obtain Bureau approval for any taking place during the year. Votes were cast – 26 approved. A 2/3rds majority was achieved.

We then moved to adopting formally the Trophy produced for the Formation Skydiving 4-Way Female event and Graeme took a vote which was over 2/3rds majority and Graeme thanked Exi for the trophy.

We then went to block vote on minor housekeeping changes in Annex 61 and 62. Vote was carried.

Buzz then announced that he is stepping down as the Chair of the Rules and Regulations committee and the members will remain the same with Buzz remaining as a member. Graeme thanked Buzz for his work.

Gillian then presented the list of proposed Juries for the 2015 competitions and the FAI Controller.  

This was voted on and accepted by the Plenary. Gillian then announced the new addition to the Jury list is Karla Cole and that was accepted by the Plenary. The Jury for the WAG in Dubai would consist of Bureau members excluding the President and this would be decided by the Bureau once its constitution is known. This was accepted by the Plenary.

Mubarak Suwailen A. Alsuwallem (Delegate for Saudia Arabia)

ASIANA - Mubarak Suwailen A. Alsuwallem, President of ASIANA made his report and stated that over the next three months they would announce their competition programme. At the AGM a decision would be taken as to whether ASIANA would become an Air Sports Federation or remain simply as a Parachuting one. Mubarak thanked the FAI for the productive meetings he has had with the President (Dr. John Grubbstrom) and the Secretary General (Susanne Schoedel).

Graeme thanked Mubarak for the good work ASIANA has done over the 20 years of its existence.

There was no delegate present from COLPAR but Buzz gave a short presentation on the World Pops Meet that was held in Argentina.

Graeme then went through the regulations covering the voting procedure for the Awards. The Gold Medal had two nominations and therefore we had to vote as to whether or not we make the award and then, as there was more than one nomination, a secret ballot would take place.

Markus then confirmed the revised Roll Call and there were 25 delegates in the room and proxies could not be used in the Awards voting process.

Svetlana Klenina

The Plenary agreed to award a Gold Medal and following the secret ballot it was awarded to Svetlana Klenina of Russia.

Graeme thanked Egypt for their nomination and spoke with thanks and appreciation for the work done by Ismail Darwish.

Aliya Ananina

A secret ballot was requested for the vote for the Leonardo Da Vinci Parachuting Diploma. This was done and Aliya Ananina of Russia receives the award.

Johannes Gritsch, Austria, spoke about the creation of an award in memorial – to be called the Tim Mace Trophy - and this will be designed by a UK company to be awarded, the first time, to the Speed Skydiver who wins the 1^st World Championships at the Mondial in 2016.

This was accepted unanimously by the Plenary.

Under AOB the first item was the Budget 2015 and 2016. Doris presented the budget for 2015 with more information now that the competitions for 2015 were known. She says she worked on an estimation of the number of competitors to arrive at an income figure. The budget showed a loss, however in answer to questions from the floor Doris explained that the budget figure was the maximum that could be spent, anything in excess had to be approved by the Bureau.

The Budgets for both years were approved by Plenary.

Exi then came to represent the proposed changes to the Canopy Piloting Rules which had not been voted on yesterday due to problems with the circulation of the document outlining them. However the problem persisted and Graeme gave the committee a few more minutes to sort the problem whilst the rest went for coffee.

After coffee the problem was still not resolved so Graeme proposed they continued with the meetings business.

Kirk Verner, USA, asked if the bid presented by Dubai for Canopy Piloting WC 2017, yesterday would be voted on. Graeme assured him that this was one of the items to be covered by the presentation of the Canopy Piloting committee.   We still had to vote on discussing the bid, and if discussed on the bid itself.

Johann Gritsch then spoke of a problem Skydiving in Austria had because of the knock on effect of a serious accident with a para-glider. This will have a detrimental effect on any foreign skydivers who wish to jump in Austria. For this reason he has a letter from their Ministry for each delegate and he asked that the few questions be answered and the letter be returned as soon as possible. He thanked the delegates for their attention.

We then moved to the confirmation of the various Liaison Officers.

Graeme confirmed that he would like to take on the vacated role of World Air Games LO, this was approved unanimously by the delegates.

Patrice Giradin is the current World Games LO, he is prepared to stay in that position, and this was approved unanimously by the delegates.

The list of committee chairs and their committees were approved by the Plenary.

We then came to voting for the two Bureau Members who have had to resign from their National Delegate positions due to their election to the FAI Executive Board. The positions of 1st-Vice President and that of Vice President were therefore free. There was some discussion on the exactitude of the voting process, once that was answered to the satisfaction of the delegates we moved to the nominations and voting for the two positions.

The nominations were Jan Andersson, Patrice Giradin, Dr. Rainer ‘Ex’ Hoenle, Liam McNulty, Ronald Overdijk and John Smyth. Jan and Ronald refused the nomination and Liam was not eligible. The nominees then made a short presentation as to why they should be voted for, which was followed by a secret vote. The result of the votes were:
Patrice 6, Exi 19 and John 6 so Dr. Rainer ‘Exi’ Hoenle was elected to the positon of 1st Vice-President. We then went through the same process for the position of Vice President. The Nominations were Patrice Giradin, Ronald Overdijk, John Smyth, Kirk Verner and Henny Wiggers, only Ronald and John accepted the nomination and again a secret vote gave us a result of 25 for Ronald and 6 for John. Ronald joined the Bureau.

(L) New 1st Vice President: Dr 'Exi' Hoenle (4th from L) New Vice President: Ronald Overdijk

Once the new Bureau had been decided it was possible to move to the election of the IPC members of the Board of IPETA or as Graeme preferred to call it, IPC Tours and Events. The Board consists of 2 members from FAI and these had been appointed already: Alvero de Orleans-Borbon and Markus Haggeney.  IPC had to nominate 2 members from the Bureau and the Plenary elects the remaining 3 members. Graeme said that the Board needed a Financial Director who had the necessary qualifications to fill the role. At the open meeting he had called for volunteers to make themselves known from the delegates at the Plenary, but none had stepped forward. He would like to propose Gail Bradley of Australia who had stood for the post of Financial Secretary to IPC at the election last year, but had been defeated in the vote by Doris Merz. She was prepared to fill the role and had the necessary qualifications to do so. Graeme said he was happy to continue on the board from the Bureau. Graeme then asked if another Bureau member wished to serve and Ronald Overdijk said he would, but not in the position of Financial Director. They then moved to the 3 members to be elected from the Plenary.

Of the current Plenary directors up for re-election, István Sipos, John Smyth, Henny Wiggers and Marylou McLaughlin it was propsed that Istvan and Marylou be re-elected along with Gail Bradley as Financial Director. This was unanimously approved by the Bureau.

We then moved back to the CP committee and the proposed rule changes. These had been recirculated by e-mail to all delegates and they had had time to look at them. The changes were put to the vote and unanimously agreed. As Exi was now 1st Vice President he was no longer able to hold the position of Chair of any committee and so he would stand down, however the committee had not yet agreed to his replacement, so the committee would discuss it, and the Bureau was empowered to agree the new committee format.

We then moved to the late bid, accepted for discussion by the 2/3rds majority voted on the day before. However this vote was not to accept the bid, only to allow it to be placed on the agenda for discussion. Ron Miasnikov asked for confirmation of the Internal Regulations which stated that once a bid was accepted for a competition to be placed on the calendar no other bids could be accepted. Kirk Verner said that he felt the Plenary should stick to the bidding format currently in place. This was a bid for 2017, but the deadline for bids to be considered for 2017 was mid-year 2015, to be considered at the 2016 Plenary. To accept the Dubai bid this early did not present an even playing field for other potential bidders who thought they had until mid-year 2015 to prepare their bid. Although as was pointed out, one of the aims of the Strategic Plan was to try and plan for FCE’s as early as possible to maximise on sponsorship possibilities.

After much discussion it was decided to ask Dubia to re-present their bid for consideration at the 2016 Plenary. The meeting hoped that Dubai would not take offence at this decision as their contribution to events in the sport was greatly appreciated by all. A vote was taken to formally refuse the bid . At the request of Exi a secret ballot was held with the result  of 13 for acceptance and 18 against.

Ron Miasnikov then said that the date announced for the accepted bid from the Czech Republic 1st World Championships of Indoor Skydiving may be moved as currently it clashed with the National Championships of the USA. The agreed date would be announced soon on the IPC Website.

We then came to the decision as to where the Plenary 2016 would be held. First we had to vote to move out of Lausanne. All the delegates, bar 1 (Switzerland) voted to go elsewhere. There were two bids in the Agenda, Australia and Germany. A Secret Ballot was called for. The result was 20 votes for Germany and 9 for Australia.

Whilst the vote was taking place John Hitchen addressed the delegates with a “follow on” story.  In Banja Luka during the competition in 2014, the coach with competitors travelling from the airfield was involved in a bad accident where a third party was seriously injured. Three of the competitors on the coach immediately went to administer first aid – and the outcome of their quick action probably saved the life of the injured person. It was nice to be able to report some positive news from a competition that had suffered from some bad publicity within the skydiving community.

Exi thanked the delegates for the vote in favour of Germany and said he looked forward to welcoming everyone in Frankfurt next year – it is a very short journey from the airport to the hotel venue, full details were in the bid contained in the agenda papers.

Niels-Christian Levin Hansen then took the opportunity to thank his Safety and Training Committee and to say thank you for the support shown In his election to the Executive Board of the FAI. He asked the delegates to look after the IPC, reminding them that success comes from Dedication, Practice and Focusing on High Performance and this should be borne in mind when preparing papers, working in committees and discussion during the meetings. Graeme thanked Niels-Christian and said his leaving the IPC was a great loss, but hoped that he would continue to work for parachuting and indeed all air-sports in his position on the Executive Board.

He then thanked our Hosts, the Bulgarian NAC and praised their work in bringing so many politicians in their country on board, their excellent work during the meeting and even arranging for us to be in a hotel where despite the devastation in the rest of the town, we could continue with the meeting, having electricity and the internet. He wished them success for the forthcoming European Championships and looked forward to returning to Bulgaria in August 2015.

There was one final item of business, in the nomination of the Chief Judge for the World Air Games in Dubai. Dr. Rainer ‘Exi’ Hoenle had been proposed and was accepted by the Plenary. An Event Judge for each discipline would be appointed and would, in effect, act as a Chief Judge in that discipline selecting their own Judging Panels.

The Plenary meeting for 2015 finally ended at 13.08.