Dear friends,
As a committee our actions were always focused to the athlete and what was best for his sport. It has been our motto and in this spirit we tried to create an excellent environment for shooting.
With a majority of former athletes we were in the first place sport focused but didn't neglect the other important areas that are necessary to run an organization.
When we started in 2000 with the current committee, we started from scratch and in the past years developed a solid structure with regular competitions, workshops, regulations and a good set of rules. We were also in very close relationship and interaction with everybody involved in the shooting sport; from athletes to coaches, from organizers to NPC's.
At that time we were the leaders of our sport.
All this changed by the introduction of the IPC Strategic Plan; it was the sign that the sports needed to move towards an independent status because the main focus of IPC would be the Paralympic Games but the bottom line of this plan, at first hidden in the full package, was that the leadership over sports could not be done by volunteers; they were replaced by paid staff who formed the Sport Management.
The true advocates of the sport were put aside and in many cases overruled by the Sport Managers.
Since 2007 we are working as a committee under supervision and could no longer proceed in what we were doing.
We tried to anticipate this by following the decisions of the Strategic Plan and in first instance tried to start a negotiation for cooperation with ISSF; when this lead to nothing we started with the preparation of a business plan that should lead to the independence of the Shooting Sport. In complete transparency with IPC we developed this process and tried to establish deadlines.
The business plan was presented to the IPC GB in March 2009 and unanimously accepted.
Nevertheless we as committee felt the position of IPC and the decisions made by the Sports Management on many occasions very ambiguous; in one way we were encouraged towards an independent status, on the other hand we were and still are controlled as never before and no matter what we do, it is never ‘good' enough.
I didn't see much support in our honest efforts to start executing our business plan.
It took until end of last year before we could receive some feedback from the Legal and Ethics Committee. It is only since January this year that our info package is on the IPC website.
Even today our Sport Manager seems to be ignorant of our plans and acts as if they are absolutely non-existant.
In the meantime the timelines proposed in our business plan were no longer valid.
As a committee we are set offside because all decisions are taken by the sport management and the STC sits in the backyard waiting until the management does a move. The pace is set for us and not by us.
We are very professionally manoeuvred in a position where we don't have a direct link to the nations; the answers are given for us and not by us. We are only consulted when the paid staff doesn't know the answers.
For us, the athlete stands central and we need to do everything that is in our power to give the athlete the possibilities to practice his sport in the best possible circumstances.
IPC Shooting has a different philosophy: first the bureaucratic details and when all this is finalized the competition gets the green light.
Immediate effect on the sport is the fact that a gain the calendar is not clear for this year because the sanctions of most of the competitions are still pending. With the immediate effect on the competitions; this already results in a very limited number of nations entering the first competitions of 2010.
The agreements we had concerning sponsorship attracted through our connections in the shooting sport and directly related to the future organisation are abused and we don't want to think about the outcome of the new rulebook but this will probably ends similar.
We were convinced we had a gentlemen's agreement on these topics but I'm afraid we were mislead (again!)
Recently we received from IPC the decision that our SH3 athletes were not allowed to participate in the World Championship because they don't have a proper classification. This is not true of course but, when the Sport Management and the Medical Committee thinks different, there is nothing we can do about.
In reality it means that even on Sport Technical issues we don't have a saying anymore.
We did everything that was in our power to work within the organisation to achieve our goal.
The motivation we had when we started this job in 2000 is gone completely and we are all disappointed and frustrated about the last 3 years because we know the position of the shooting sport and the process towards that independent status and the benefit it would have caused for the sport could been a world of difference.
Our hope to create a better environment for our athletes was idle.
For al these reasons it was no longer possible to continue our job as members of the Committee and resign from our positions was only action for us to do.
Yours in sport,
Walter, Wolfgang, and August
ps. Sally is still considering her decision