On the opening day of the 2018 FIS Congress, the participants were immediately engaged at the FIS Development Programme Leaders’ Seminar. With the topic: “Collaboration between Developed and Developing National Ski Associations” the seminar was successfully held with a diverse group of more than 40 participants from 24 different nations.

Alfons Hörmann, FIS Council Member and Sarah Lewis, FIS Secretary General opened the Seminar followed by a Best Practice example between France and Monaco with Fabien Saguez, National Technical Director of the French Ski Federation and Jacques Pastor, Technical Director of the Monaco Ski Federation demonstrating a great example of long term collaboration between the nations. 

Next up on the agenda was discussion the needs of developing nations led by Pedro Farromba (POR), Anne O’Conor (IRL) and Milan Bozic (SRB) which showed interesting examples of what would be needed from their perspective to develop ski sport further in many developing nations.

Lecturers from developed nations also presented including the Norwegian and Austrian Ski Associations, with Christian Scherer and Helen Ingebretsen presenting the participants some possibilities for collaboration with “big” nations and examples of actions they are undertaking to mentor “smaller” nations.

The various sessions in a Workshop led by Roman Kumpost, FIS Council Member supported by Markus Malsiner, Sandro Pertile and Martijn Oostddijk stimulated with lively discussions as the participants could learn many different perspectives from each other, resulting in some productive suggestions to further develop the activities as part of the FIS Development Programme.

Alfons Hörmann and Josef Zenhäusern concluded the productive FIS Leaders Seminar and wished the participants all the best for the upcoming congress meetings.

Source: fis-ski.com