IAAF Candidates Sketch Out Plans for Member Feds

(ATR) Both IAAF presidential candidates Sebastian Coe and Sergey Bubka want to invest more money in national athletics federations.

Both candidates spoke today about how each would go about developing athletics worldwide through helping individual national federations.

Coe, speaking at the Greater Central American Championships in Nicaragua, says that a review of existing IAAF Development Programs needs to be done to tailor how development is done with each national federation.

"The role of the IAAF’s Regional Development and High Performance Centers also needs to be reviewed," Coe said.

"We need to think more in terms of bringing the RDCs to the federations, and that is why I want to see the introduction of mobile regional development centers to supplement the RDCs where skilled people, rather than buildings, can connect with and support member federations year round. There is also huge potential for ‘E learning’ using experts to mentor those from developing federations cost-effectively."

In addition to the new plan, Coe believes that the IAAF should redistribute more of the rights it sells to fund national federations. He also said he would like to create an "in-house commercial department to support the commercial growth of all our member federations."

Bubka, in a statement, says that if elected he plans to tailor individual approaches to every national federation to plan for their development needs.

"My goal is to use an individual approach for every national federation just as a coach uses different techniques for the different athletes he trains," Bubka said in his statement.

"We have to work out development plans for every national federation which will provide them with every possible IAAF program and resource to support development. I would like to create several groups, dividing the national federations depending on the level of support that they require."

Bubka said he would also add more regional IAAF competitions to widen the competition pool for developing athletes, and guarantee that all national federations have at least one synthetic track in order to begin upgrades on their facilities.

The IAAF presidential election will take place at the IAAF congress in August before the 2015 World Championships in Beijing.

Written by Aaron Bauer

20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.