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Australia implements Global Athlete License as compulsory requirement for all its competitions
Lausanne, Switzerland – January 15th, 2013
From 1st January 2014, all athletes competing is state and national competitions in Australia are required to have the WTF Global Athlete Licence (GAL).
Australia has been at the forefront of the WTF’s GMS and GAL initiatives and to further the implementation of this global initiative, Australia will be the first country to make the GAL mandatory for all its state, regional and national competitions.
STA’s President, John Kotsifas stated,
“We have been assisting the WTF in the development of the Global Membership System for a number of years now. We were the first country to fully implement the GMS as our own national membership system so as to provide our members with a comprehensive and revolutionary membership system developed by the WTF. To further our partnership with the WTF, we have now decided to make the Global Athlete licence mandatory for all competitions in Australia from 1st January 2014. This means, that all athletes irrespective of age and belt rank, will be required to have the GAL in order to compete as an athlete in Australia. Further, all Coaches, judges and officials will also be required to have the Global Official Licence (GOL) in order to officiate and coach at any Australian competition.
Australia will again be the first country to implement this requirement and we will work closely with the WTF to provide valuable feedback of this important initiative that will be implemented in 2014.
Consequently, in Australia, all ordinary members of STA will hold WTF GMS National membership, all athletes competing domestically, will hold the WTF GAL and all officials, coaches and judges participating at any domestic events will be required to hold a WTF Global Official Licence.
These are all important developments for our sport in Australia and our desire to link our domestic activities to the WTF Global membership system and to further develop our relationship with the WTF”
Jean Marie Ayer, WTF Secretary General expressed his satisfaction with the announcement; “We are very happy to see STA implementing fully the Global Membership System. We completely support them in integrating closer with the WTF. The day when Taekwondo has the most organized and far reaching database of practitioners in all Olympic Sports is a step closer now”.
This Global Membership System (GMS) will allow WTF and its Member National Associations to run Tournaments using the WTF Event Registration which is linked to the GMS as was used in the past Poomsae World Championships in Bali, Indonesia.
World Class Accreditation in Bali
The Main Accreditation Center in Bali served around 1,000 people, most of them during the 4 days the registration center was operating fully. 47 teams were registered during that period of time.
29 of the 30 teams that provided their feedback on the Registration Process, Staff and Waiting Time gave the best possible rating to each one of the three variables.
Some even went further with their comments. “The registration process actually might be the best I’ve seen, and I have attended 5 World Championships until now” wrote Nadia Sobhi, the head of the Egyptian delegation.
“The registration centre success would have not been possible without the help of the volunteers; they made it a success” explained Mark Kaufmann, WTF Accreditation Centre Manager.
At least two dozen volunteers -mostly University students- helped during the registration process, from the back end processing of credentials to welcoming Heads of Team and guiding them through the registration from start to finish.
Building on solid grounds
During the WTF World Championships held last July in Puebla, the onsite registration waiting time went from hours -in some previous cases- to 12 minutes waiting time per team on average. Mr. Justin Tenbeth, Project Manager of the GMS (Global Membership System) stated,
“We gathered the members’ Data and Photos on the system in advance, which allowed us to print credentials in advance so registration was very quick and efficient. We are looking forward to having more National Associations using the GMS at a national level so their members can benefit from an online registration that leads to a seamless onsite registration Locally too”.
The information about tournaments will flow through the system, benefiting the organizers as well since members will be able to see and register online to Tournaments from their WTF profile. From this year members will even have an official record of their results and rankings, for life in the GMS starting with the latest results and rankings for WTF Tournaments.
The Operations Manager for the WTF Licence, Javier E. Altamirano, mentioned one key of the WTF Licence and system. “Our members will benefit of a unified system; the more Tournaments use our Online Registration, the less administration will be needed for Tournament registration. If we can keep all data in one centralized system, why send it again each time you go to a Tournament?”
The Latin American says with a smile on his face: “In Bali we were looking to improve also the perception; the look and feel of the accreditation centre. Keeping it consistent to what we did in Puebla, we hired the same consultant from Puebla, Martin Sanchez and we coordinated seamlessly with the OC in Bali and we believe we went beyond expectations.”
Source: WTF
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