ST. GALLEN – At the moment St. Gallen is the host city of the 2011 IFF Women’s World Floorball Championship. 16 teams participate at this championship (www.wfc2011.ch). During the competition week the International Floorball Federation (IFF) held a two-days IFF Associations Meeting, where FISU Vice-President Leonz Eder was invited by the IFF President Tomas Eriksson (SWE) and Secretary-General John Liljelund (FIN) to present FISU and its activities. After a workshop on “IOC Full Recognition Implications for Floorball” and “Floorball on the way to the Olympics”, Leonz Eder took the floor and spoke about “Universalism in Sports”. He presented the FISU activities both in sports and education, including statistics to the participation at the Universiades and the World University Championships.
Floorball is part of the FISU WUC sports program since 2002, and at the last two editions both male and female teams participated. The next WUC Floorball will be held in Prague, Czech Republic and seems to bring a new record in participation. So far 54 nations are members in the IFF, but only some 10-12 of them participate at the FISU WUC. In the Question and Answers session a lot of delegates expressed their wish to receive more direct information from FISU about the WUC in order to establish closer relations to the different National University Sports Federations. The IFF Family aims not only to become part of the Olympic Games but also would strongly like to be integrated in the Universiade program.
After having received the full IOC recognition on July 8th, 2011 for the IFF and Floorball, IFF President Tomas Eriksson declared: “Now IFF needs to move forward in order to fulfill the three main targets defined in the strategic vision for the coming decade until 2020; achieving a total of 100 member associations on five continents, participation in a multi-sport games – World Games, Universiade or the Olympic Games – and an active competition structure on both a regional and global level.”
IFF representatives stressed their readiness to cooperate even more with FISU. Leonz Eder encouraged the IFF delegates to get in touch with the NUSFs in their country and to support delegations to the WUC Floorball. IFF confirmed to help to find an organizer for the WUC Floorball 2014.
(Source: OC WWFC 2011)
Leonz Eder as keynote speaker at the IFF Associations Meeting (Photo Sarah Mitchell, IFF)
FISU Vice-President Leonz Eder & IFF Secretary General John Liljelund
