News from the WTF General Assembly in Hochiminh City / Vietnam
By ETU
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
At the WTF General Assembly in Hochiminh City the following main points have been discussed and decided:
- WTF Statutes have been amended. The main point: In the future any National Association will have to send at least two competitors to world-level competitions otherwise it will risk its voting right at the GA of WTF.
- WTF (Kyorugi) Competition Rules haven been amended. The main point is the inclusion of one extra point in competition for higher techniques and the definition of those techniques.
- WTF Poomse Competition Rules have been amended. Now there are fewer classes and categories.
- Two new WTF Member Federations have been adopted (Kiribati and Zambia). Now the WTF has a total number of 181 Member National Federations.
- Host sites for upcoming international events have been selected:
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- The 7th World Junior Taekwondo Champions 2008 will be held in Izmir / Turkey on May 8th - 11th 2008.
- The host city for the 2nd World Taekwondo Poomse Championships will be Incheon / Korea - probably in autumn 2007.
- Progress reports have been given by the organizing committees for the 1st WTF World Poomse Championships in September 2006 in Seoul, for the 18th WTF World Taekwondo Championships and the 11th WTF Women's World Taekwondo Championships in Beijing, China, in 2007 and also about the preparation for Taekwondo at the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in beijing, China from August 20th until 23rd 2008. A test event will be organized on this site from February 26th - 29th 2008 for 128 competitors.
- WTF has set up an evaluation system on activities of member National Associations and Regional Unions. The GA has also agreed about a resolution about the critical situation of Taekwondo players and officials in Iraq, who have been kidnapped some time ago and it condemned all actions of terrorism or other acts of brutal force. There was also some information about the progress of the upcoming electronic scoring system, about which another decision will be made in August 2006.
- Olympic Qualification system for 2008 has been thoroughly explained. The sites for the Continental Olympic Qualification Tournaments will be:
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- World Qualification Tournament: Manchester / Great Britain (Sept. 23-25 2007)
- Africa: t.b.a. (early November 2007)
- Asia: Hochiminh City / Vietnam (late November 2007)
- Pan-America: Bogota / Columbia (mid December 2007)
- Oceania: t.b.a. (late December 2007)
- Europe: Istanbul / Turkey (late January 2008)
- An international Taekwondo Day was proclaimed and this will be the 4th of September each year, the day on which the IOC decided to accept the sport into the Olympic programme (on Sept. 4th 1994 at the 103rd IOC session in Paris).
The next WTF General Assembly will be on May 14th 2008 in Beijing, at the occasion of the World Taekwondo Championships 2008.
All detailed changes in the Statutes and the Rules and Regulations can be read at the homepage of the WTF.
