Joint Taekwondo Demonstration in Lausanne -- Federation Focus

(ATR) World Taekwondo (WT) and the International Taekwondo Federation (ITF) are bringing their joint-demonstration to the Olympic capital on Thursday.

The event at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne is the second of three marking the ongoing cooperation between the two federations. Co-hosted by the IOC, it will also be commemorating taekwondo’s 25th anniversary of joining the Olympic program.

The initial joint-demonstration was held on April 5 in Vienna, the home of the ITF headquarters. Both the ITF and WT teams performed an array of different taekwondo skills including kicking, board breaking, solo patterns and self-defense.

The two federations will complete their trio of joint-demonstrations with an event in Geneva at the United Nations offices on Friday.

The series of demonstrations is the latest sports diplomacy by the two federations that began with the signing of a Protocol of Accord during the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games under the guidance of the IOC. Since the signing, WT and ITF have organized joint events in Chelyabinsk in 2015; Muju in 2017; Pyeongchang in 2018; and Pyongyang in 2018.

The most notable joint-demonstration was held at the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games in the Olympic stadium just before the Opening Ceremony.

Around the Rings correspondent Brian Pinelli will be in Lausanne for Thursday's event at the Olympic Museum.

Ping Pong Diplomacy Frames USA Table Tennis Bid

A delegation from the U.S. will head to Budapest later this month to support the bid from Houston, Texas for the 2021 Table Tennis World Championships.

The International Table Tennis Federation will vote on April 21 between the bids from the U.S. and Morocco. The Federation meeting takes place on the sidelines of the 2019 world champs in the Hungarian capital.

Steering the Houston bid is Anne Warner Cribbs, one time Olympic swimmer and now president and CEO of the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee in San Francisco. She is also chair of the board for USA Table Tennis.

The U.S. bid includes the backing of the U.S. Olympic Committee both in spirit and with staff accompanying the Houston team to the federation congress in Hungary. That includes Dragomir Ciroslan, USOC international relations expert, himself a native of Hungary.

Around the Rings is told that besides the facilities and hospitality venues Houston offers, the presentation of the bid will call attention to 2021 as the 50th anniversary of the "ping pong diplomacy" that opened the door to restoration of ties between the U.S. and China.

The Houston bid proposes that the finals be held at the Toyota Center, a state-of-the-art NBA arena. It’s located across the street from the George Brown Convention Center where tournament preliminaries will be held.

China is bidding for the 2022 table tennis championships.

New US Sailing President Has Big Plans

The USA has won only one sailing medal in the past two Summer Olympics, so there is clearly a need for improvement at the elite level of the sport in the United States.

But new US Sailing federation president Cory Sertl tells Sailing World there is much more to be done during her tenure, which is limited to a single three-year term.

Written by Gerard Farekand Ed Hula.

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