5 July 2011 - Pascal COLMAIRE: how we help federations

Pascal COLMAIRE: how we help federations Turin – 5 July 2011   We met Pascal COLMAIRE, World Archery Development and Education Director. While telling us what he thinks about Torino’s World Championships, he gave us a very extensive explanation of his tasks.    Pascal COLMAIRE This competition is so big! I am pleased to see so many people shooting at such a high level and in such a nice place. But, from my point of view, we should slow down a little bit. When a competition is being organised, it sets a standard that all the following organisers want to improve, but this time the Organising Committee has done something so huge that I’m getting concerned: now only a few countries can do something similar, and this is not what I am trying to do as the Development and Education Director of FITA.   Once, our mission was to get more and more people interested in archery. Nowadays we have enough archers and federations, so we changed our goal. Now we help the different federations and organisations to improve themselves and to get more organised. We want federations to have a plan or—to say it in a way that is more connected with our sport—we want them to have a target. Then we give them assistance to reach it and in this way they can improve. In this way we improve too and we learn how to help them better and better.   For example, if I take a look around, I can see a lot of archers from those federations that we helped. I can see archers from Colombia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Malaysia, Georgia, etc. Take Georgia, for example. A couple of years ago the situation of that federation was not very good, and this year the Georgian women team won the European Indoor Championships. I am very proud of them because I would like to see all these federations competing in the Olympic Games.   Dajana PICCOLO, Rebecca RABOZZI World Archery Communication