Kim Andersen elected World Sailing President

by Daniel Smith, World Sailing 13 Nov 2016 16:23 GMT 13 November 2016

Kim Andersen has been elected as World Sailing President at World Sailing's General Assembly as the 2016 Annual Conference drew to a close in Barcelona, Spain.

The President and seven Vice-Presidents, two of which must be female, were voted for by World Sailing's full Member National Authorities, all of whom are entitled to be represented at the General Assembly.

Joining the World Sailing President on the Board of Directors will be:

• Jan Dawson (NZL)
• Torben Grael (BRA)
• Gary Jobson (USA)
• Quanhai Li (CHN)
• W Scott Perry (URU)
• Ana Sanchez (ESP)
• Nadine Stegenwalner (GER)

The Chairman of the Athletes' Commission will join the Board of Directors as a permanent voting member. In addition, the World Sailing Presidents of Honour, His Majesty King Harald V of Norway and His Majesty King Constantine are entitled to attend and participate in Board of Directors meetings but they do not hold a vote.

The new Board of Directors will serve a four-year term up until the General Assembly in November 2020.

Alongside the Election of Officers, the General Assembly confirmed that the ten events and equipment used at the Rio 2016 Olympic Sailing Competition will be proposed to the International Olympic Committee for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. World Sailing Council will now consider the possibility of requesting an 11th Olympic medal and the type of event.

The venues of the 2017 and 2018 Annual Conference were also decided. Mexico will host delegates in 2017 and Sarasota, Florida, USA in 2018.

The General Assembly marked the end of the 2016 Annual Conference. Across nine days of meetings, more than 1,000 delegates have attended a variety of Forums and Committee meetings to discuss, debate and share best practice to take the sport forward into the new year and beyond.

Kim Andersen elected as new World Sailing President (from oneteamoneplan.org)

Kim Andersen has been elected as the new President of World Sailing. Andersen, a long-time sailor having represented Denmark in over 20 World and European Championships, has been long been involved with the sport as an elite athlete and senior administrator. With his experience in World Sailing as the Chairman of the Equipment Committee combined with his years working in international business as a CEO, Vice-President and Managing Director of a number of international companies, Andersen has a proven track record in implementing and managing successful organisations.

World Sailing, based in Southampton, GBR, governs sailing worldwide and oversees over 140 affiliated Member National Authorities. World Sailing's 2016 Annual Conference opened on Monday and today's General Assembly concluded the activities. Andersen is the eighth president in the history of World Sailing (formerly ISAF) since 1946, the first time a President was elected, replacing the previous Chairman role.

Andersen stated: "This is an exciting day for World Sailing, today marks a turning point in the history of our sport. We have a lot of work to do and I am focused on uniting our sport so that each and every country continues gets the right tools and knowledge they need to develop our sport worldwide."

The vision on which Andersen focused his platform targeted three key areas: proactively working to boost Sailing's Olympic and Paralympic status, ensuring global growth for sailing at the grassroots and elite levels and providing transparent governance processes.

"We have many important tasks to accomplish in World Sailing and our MNAs are key in ensuring that we are successful. Already, I had the chance to exchange many ideas with our MNAs and I am committed to ensuring that this open dialogue with our MNAs and our regional organisations continues throughout my Presidency and beyond."

Today's Presidential election saw 99 MNAs vote by secret ballot, where Kim Andersen took the majority votes in a second round run-off against incumbent Carlo Croce when Paul Henderson exited in the first round. While a difficult feat for a first time candidate to replace a sitting President, Andersen's platform seemed to resound well among the sailing world leading up to today's decision.