Live From Lausanne ...

Ashli Williamson, Thomas Bach, Lukas Hinder

Ashli Williamson, the chair of the WDSF Athletes' Commission, danced the GrandSlam Standard in Wuhan, CHN, where she and partner Bjorn Bitsch ended up in sixth place on Sunday. First thing on Monday - at 5 a.m. to be exact - she left Central China and flew via Beijing to Geneva, SUI, and travelled on to nearby Lausanne. There she currently attends the 2016 edition of SportAccord - together with WDSF President Lukas Hinder and Treasurer Tony Tilenni. From this four-day convention in the Olympic capital, Ashli promised to file reports on a regular basis. Here is first one.

So far the Sport Accord 2016 has been a fruitful one for the WDSF.

With our new President Lukas Hinder being the treasurer of the International World Games Association (IWGA), the convention started with the Annual General Assembly for the IWGA and ran smoothly, with DanceSport having an active roll. This opened a lot of doors for WDSF's networking throughout the week.

I had the pleasure of attending, together with Lukas Hinder and Tony Tilenni numerous meetings today. All of which were very interesting and proved to be successful in moving DanceSport forward in the world of sport.

For example having a meeting with a new digital channel (The Olympic Channel) which would like DanceSport to be a part of this new project. This could give DanceSport exposure to new audiences in a whole new way.

Another important meeting was with the CEO of the International Paralympic Committee, Mr. Xavier Gonzalez, where the next steps were taken to ensure an even better connection with the Paralympic Games.

The official ceremony was this evening where the President of IOC, Thomas Bach gave a very good speech about how important it is for the IOC that all International Federations have good governance in direct connection with clean athletes. On this point the WDSF can be proud to be on the track with clear ideas and now roadmaps to make our sport clean in all areas.

I was delighted to hear the final piece of the presentation where it was announced that Aarhus, Denmark will be the next host of Sport Accord in 2017, 25 minutes from my home. As Aarhus has been chosen to be the Culture Capital in 2017 this was a nice surprize. Now we just have to get DanceSport a roll in this great convention for all sports. :-)

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By John Caprez on 20 April 2016 14:12