The creator of ambitious plans for a mega sport event featuring every major international sports federation tells Around the Rings those plans are shelved for now .
The brainchild of SportAccord president Marius Vizer, the United World Championships is meant to draw every international sport world championship to the same country every four years. The concept was part of Vizer’s campaign for election to SportAccord last May. Vizer is also president of the International Judo Federation.
But while Vizer was able to prevail easily in the vote for the SportAccord presidency, the world championships idea proved less popular. IOC president Thomas Bach and some international federation leaders expressed doubts about the viability of the idea as well as its conflict with the concept of the Olympic Games.
Vizer tells Around the Rings that he’s not abandoned the idea, but that his organization wants to wait for the conclusion of the Agenda 2020 process launched by Bach before considering any next steps. Agenda 2020 is meant to come up with changes to the IOC and administration of the Olympics by the end of the year.
"We have decided to wait for the IOC, respectively Mr. Thomas Bach, to complete the strategy for the 2020 Olympic Agenda. According to the IOC's plans for 2020 Olympic Agenda and, of course, the interests of the international federations, SportAccord will finalize its own strategy which will be in synergy with the Olympic Movement," Vizer tells ATR in a statement.
Nonetheless, Vizer is occupied organizing two other new sport events under the SportAccord banner: World Beach Games and World Urban Games. The bigger of the two, the beach games, in partnership with the Association of National Olympic Committees, is targeted to draw nearly 6,000 athletes and officials. While there are hopes to launch the event in 2015, Vizer has said 2017 might be more feasible for the first edition.
The World Urban Games are being planned for 2016 after the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics. Host cities for both urban and beach games are being sought.
These two new events join to others already established by SportAccord, World Combat Games and World Mind Games.
Written by Ed Hula
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