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Guest blog: Niels de Vos, CEO, UKA

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Niels de Vos 17 March 2011

I sit writing this blog as I return to the UK from the Olympic capital of Lausanne having spent the past 24 hours locked in meetings with some of international sport's most senior and impressive administrators. From the IOC's Sports Director Christophe Dubi to Andrew Ryan of ASOIF, each person I spoke to had a perspective that made me feel differently about sport in general and international sport in particular.

I have been in Lausanne as a participant on UK Sport's International Leadership Programme (ILP). Each year up to 15 people from UK NGBs are selected to go through 12 months of intensive development. The aim is to ensure that those people understand better the structure and politics of international sport and develop the skills, competencies and, perhaps more importantly, the networks needed to enable them to become successful operators on the international stage.

As the CEO of a domestic NGB focussing, amongst other things, on delivering medal success in the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London in just under 500 days time, it is sometimes easy to forget that although we compete with other nations for podium places, we need to work together with those same nations to develop sport internationally.

Of course there are healthy tensions that exist between competing countries. We all want to win and, quite rightly, do so in a way which contributes to the development of our sport in our own jurisdictions. What is important though, and I have been reminded of this as part of the ILP, is that we recognise that success cannot come in isolation. The strongest sports globally have many strong countries and govern in the interest of the many rather than the few. We can be successful on the international stage and at the same time work in partnership with others for the betterment of sport, in my case track and field athletics.

It becomes increasingly clear to me also that the relationship that exists between an NGB and its International Federation (IF) is one where there can and should be mutuality both of obligation and benefit. An example which brings this to life is the IAAF World Athletics Championships which we are bidding to host in London in 2017. Bringing the Championships to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park would of course be a tremendous opportunity to deliver against a number of our domestic objectives. At the same time, such an event would enable the UK to contribute to the development of our sport on a global basis – working in partnership with the IAAF in recognition of the fact that we have a part to play in this area, should we be entrusted with this responsibility. 

As a stakeholder in the global property that is sport, developing an understanding of the objectives and challenges of our partners enables us to play our part more effectively. Having the quality of access to administrators at the highest level of sport that the ILP brings has helped me to see this more clearly than ever before. I look forward to building on this knowledge and continuing to work with the unique, informal and international network that I am now a part of. As we host the European Athletics Congress in London next month, I am as enthusiastic as I have ever been about the contribution we hope to make internationally.

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