ITU President Les McDonald writes: Greetings everyone,

I have been working with ITU Headquarters over the past weeks to draft a growth and development plan for ITU which will carry us through to the new Olympiad. I was also fortunate enough to have Sheila O'Kelly CAN, Ray Hahn KOR, Ed Rice IRE, and Enrique Quesada ESP, in Vancouver for an extended period of time in January to assist myself and ITU staff with this project..

We are also looking to connect the December 2004 ITU Congress in Vancouver to this Project, Why do we need to do this?

• Momentum post-Athens: We need to build on the momentum which will result from the magic moments we will experience at the Athens Olympic Games Triathlon. When the men's and women's triathlons are over at Vouliagmeni, we need a plan in place to build on the excitement and energy.
• Project Plan: We need to establish a plan to enhance the development of the sport in all 5 regions of ITU. ITU, as the world governing body for the sport, needs to address the needs of our 5 regions and 93 NFs – a healthy exercise involving looking back and looking forward.
• Focus on Other Disciplines: We also need to address the non-Olympic disciplines of ITU: duathlon, winter triathlon, long distance triathlon, aquathlon, sprint events, etc.

What does our plan involve? We have drafted a 3 phase plan to:·

• Sport Administration: Strengthen our partnerships with Regional Confederations and National Federations. We have highly successful NFs which have already offered to share their expertise in terms of administration, coaching, officiating, event management· with NFs who have no Olympians in Athens.
• High Performance Centres and Coaches Certification: Form partnerships among “Olympian” NF’s with “Non-Olympian NF’s” to increase the flags in Beijing.
• Event Management: Form partnerships among “high quality” ITU events with emerging events to implement ITU standards and grow the sport. NFs and Regions need the highest quality events for the development of athletes. This would include some of our “flag ship” events partnering with other events to raise the standard for everyone.

NF Survey: One of the first things we need to do is collect data from our regions and NFs. Leslie Buchanan, ITU Technical Director has the NF Survey to assess where NFs and Regions are in terms of growth and development, and where they see themselves in 4 years.

We are asking each national federation to download and save the NF Survey, then email back to ITU. You can also print the survey, complete then fax back to ITU Headquarters.

You can download the survey from by clicking here: NF Survey

Based on the feed-back from the NF Survey we’ll move to the 2nd phase of our plan which is face-to-face meetings with NFs over the coming months.

The 3rd phase of our plan is to use information from the survey to plan a 3 day conference/ congress in Vancouver next December with the goal of implementing long and short term partnerships between our regions, NFs, as well as our many other partners: athletes, media, television, event management, and officials.

We need each NF to complete the NF Survey and return it to ITU Headquarters by email or fax.

I also look forward to hearing from all members of ITU Committees and Regional Organisations.

If you have any questions, please phone ITU Headquarters at 1.604 926 7250, fax: 1.604 926 7260 or email: ituhdq@triathlon.org - or my personal email: les.mcdonald@triathlon.org

Please give this survey your immediate attention so we can proceed to build the other elements of our partnership plan and launch of the Beijing Olympiad in Vancouver - December 2004.

Kind regards - Les McDonald, President
International Triathlon Union