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USA WEIGHTLIFTING PROPOSALS FOR MODIFICATION OF IWF EVENTS
Ursula Garza Papandrea, IWF Vice President President & Chair, USA Weightlifting.
On behalf of USA Weightlifting and in relation to the President’s letter of June 17, 2019, we wish to present
some ideas and proposals for the Board and the Board’s Committees to consider as the sport seeks to
become more efficient.
These proposals consider the following goals:
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Improving costs for events organizers
Improving efficiency and efficacy of IWF Secretariat operations as it comes to the time spent on
events, in particular the education of LOCs.
Improved set ups for both live and TV audiences, with the emphasis on the TV audience.
Reduction of costs for National Federations.

THE ISSUE: COMPETITION LENGTH
Identified challenges
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Competitions are too long, often taking more than 12-15 days of travel to teams and sport leaders
that are willing to stay the whole tournament.
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It is financially challenging to the teams to be overseas for too long as it is for the sport leaders and
technical officials to stay for the whole competition, especially 3-6 times a year in some cases. This time
and financial drain also takes away from resources to grow the sport domestically in their home market.
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On the marketing side, it is difficult to maintain attention and interest with such long events.
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When the competition is broadcasted, the TV production costs are based on the amount of days
that the crew is on site. Long events mean high costs. It is also easier to sell a more compact event to
potential broadcasters.
Proposed solution
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Without hindering participation, we would like to propose a World Championships happening in
the span of six days, being five of them broadcasted. To achieve that, it is mandatory to use a multiple
platform event.
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The technology and expertise for this is already existing as many member federations apply this
solution to their local events, including for example the USA and Spain.
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The proposal schedule was created using the real Ashgabat 2018 numbers. One of the platforms
was exclusively dedicated to TV, in a schedule that would work for them.
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