European national rowing federations’ General Assembly

The European Rowing Management Board (ERMB) led the assembled delegates through the agenda. Ryszard Stadniuk, Chair of the ERMB, opened the assembly and thanked the Spanish Federation and the Seville organising committee for the excellent congress facilities. He also congratulated the Belarus Rowing Federation on their successful organisation of the European Rowing Junior Championships one week earlier.

The organising committees of next year’s senior championship (in Belgrade, Serbia) and the junior championship (in Hazewinkel, Belgium) presented the status of their preparations for staging the events. Belgrade issued their bulletin and Hazewinkel’s will be distributed shortly.

Dermot Henihan, representing the European Olympic Committees association, gave a presentation about the European Games that will take place from 12 to 28 June 2015 in Baku, Azerbaijan. In the last two weeks, rowing has been invited to participate in these games.
Matt Smith, FISA Executive Director, highlighted the issues involved with rowing’s participation:

• Rowing venue. A venue still remains to be identified as there is no venue in Baku and the nearest venue is 350 km away in Mingachevir, a former Soviet Union training centre. FISA and ERMB representatives will travel to Baku shortly to try and work out a venue solution.
• Regatta calendar.  If rowing participates in the European Games, these will substitute the European Rowing Championships in 2015. This would lead FISA to move the second stage of the World Rowing Cup series to the end of May (29, 30, 31 May) so that the European Games could take place in the usual slot of World Rowing Cup II on the weekend of 19, 20, 21 June 2015. This would make participation for non-European teams in this stage of the World Rowing Cup difficult.
• Boat transport. Finally, boat transport for Azerbaijan involves travelling through Ukraine and Georgia or Bulgaria and Turkey, so time for the boat trailers needs to be calculated.

The inspection team will make a report back to the ERMB which will then be circulated to the European national federations. An Extraordinary Assembly will take place on Saturday, 13 July 2013 at 10:00 hrs in Lucerne, Switzerland where the European federations will be asked to express their wishes on participation in the games. The FISA Council will meet on the following day to assess the global situation.

The bid process called for the attribution of the 2015 European Rowing Championships and the 2015 European Rowing Junior Championships at this General Assembly. The city of Poznan, Poland, put forward a complete bid for Malta Lake in 2015 and presented the details of the bid to the delegates. The ERMB announced that this would be a conditional attribution of the event subject to the decision taken on 13 July in Lucerne on the European Games question. Poznan was conditionally awarded the 2015 Championships awaiting this decision on 13 July.

The 2015 European Rowing Junior Championships were awarded to Racice, Czech Republic. The Turkish Federation expressed its interest in bidding for a European event in the near future. The ERMB thanked them for their interest and will work with them to present a future bid.

Dag Danzglock of Germany was elected for a new four-year term on the European Rowing Management Board. He has served in this position since 2006. The Copenhagen organisers of the 2014 European Rowing Indoor Championships presented information on their event which will take place on 25 January 2014.

Another opportunity for European Rowing was presented at the assembly by Marc Joerg and Paul Bristow. This event, called the European Sports Championships, would gather the leading sports during one ten-day period to provide interesting television programming. The first edition would take place from the end of July to the beginning of August 2018. They have invited rowing to participate as a core sport of this event. It would be financed initially based on television rights income and would be the European Championships of that year. A difficulty with this opportunity would be its place in the international calendar for the year 2018, as teams would have an additional competition during the preparation period between the final World Rowing Cup regatta and the World Rowing Championships. One option would be to move the date of the World Rowing Championships one or two weeks later in that season. Over the next few weeks television consultations will take place and a further update will be provided on 13 July 2013 in Lucerne.