#development

Sri Lankan Wrestling Federation Hosts National Referee Course

By United World Wrestling Press

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (October 25) – The Sri Lankan Wrestling Federation and Sri Lanka NOC organized an Introduction to Referee Course around their U20 National Championships. The course was held from 15-17 October and the competition was on 16 October.  Sri Lankan Wrestling Federation took an active part to make the course successful. Mr. Sarath Hewavithrana, president of Sri Lankan Wrestling Federation was present himself throughout the course.  Mr. Gopinath and Mr, Dinesh, both from Sri Lanka NOC, were also present during course.

The Introduction to Refereeing course was conducted by Mr. Ashok Kumar – UWW Educator, IS and Olympic Referee.  This course had 16 participants (14 men and 2 women).  Each day they had a theoretical session from 09h00 to 13h00 and a practical session form 14h30 to 18h00.  The referee participants focused on skills that would provide a solid foundation as a referee.  The areas they focused on were evaluation of holds, starting and ending matches, referee mechanics, positioning, safety of the athletes, and controlling the bout. During the course, they were asked to referee simulated matches before and after the competition.  All of the candidates took part in the U20 National Competition. These activities allowed the referees to apply the skills that they learned directly from the course. “The candidates were very enthusiast to under this course. All participants were happy to learn the course information.” said Mr. Kumar.

#UnitedWorldWrestling

Good governance at UWW: most women ITOs at Paris 2024, reserved seats in Bureau

By United World Wrestling Press

CORSIER-SUR-VEVEY, Switzerland (July 11) -- United World Wrestling will send its highest number of female International Technical Officers (ITOs) to Paris 2024. This marks a significant jump with 22 percent of the total wrestling ITOs for Paris 2024 begin women.

Continuing its efforts towards gender balance, UWW will send 11 ITOs to Paris, the most in wrestling history at the Olympic Games. The first female ITO in wrestling at the Olympics was back in 1988 at the Seoul Olympics.

In another significant move, UWW amended its constitution to reserve two more seats for women in the Bureau, thereby bringing the minimum number of women Bureau members to five. The number of vice presidents was also increased from the current number of five to six, including a minimum of two women vice presidents.

These steps were in line with the good governance that UWW strives for in its work. The results of the past efforts are reflected in the fifth governance report of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations published last month.

UWW moved from Group B to Group A2 in the ASOIF report, scoring 188 points out of a maximum of 240 points and progressed since the last review, moving up one group.

The ASOIF also used UWW's example to demonstrate good ways to showcase organizational structure, allowances and benefits in finance, the conduct of elections, announcing of open positions, competition law compliance, appeal process and data protection and IT security.

UWW was one of the 32 International Federations that participated in the study which includes five sections -- transparency, integrity, democracy, development and sustainability and control mechanisms.

Each of these sections is further divided into 12 indicators and the ASOIF scores each IF based on these indicators.

The first review of IFs was conducted in 2016-17. In the latest review, all 32 IFs exceeded the target of 150 out of 240, and most saw their score on the 50 retained indicators increase by a meaningful amount.