The President's Note N° 5 - 2020

Dear members of the Gymnastics family!

April was unfortunately overwhelmed with the COVID-19 pandemic as well.

Being in quarantine brought us new ways of working online and showing support to each other…

…Yes, today, sport facilities are empty and all sport fans are missing the thrill of competitions. But it does not prevent the Federations from supporting each other with positive videos posted and shared on social media. These videos are not only viewed in sports circles, but also stimulate all the people to move and stay active while they spend their time at home.

Currently, we have nothing to do but to go through this situation and wait for this disease to drop out of our environment.

Meanwhile, we are conducting video conferences with the President’s Board and Executive Committee of European Gymnastics to see how to proceed further as we are aware that everybody is concerned about the future events in the post-pandemic period.

We had scheduled 8 events for this year – European Championships in Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (WAG), Men’s Artistic Gymnastics (MAG), Rhythmic Gymnastics (RG), Trampoline, Tumbling and Double Mini-Trampoline (TRA), TeamGym and the three Gymnastics for All Festivals EUROGYM, European Gym for Life Challenge and Golden Age Gym Festival. After communication with the Local Organising Committees and consequent deliberations, we have arrived at a decision to hold EUROGYM, European Gym for Life Challenge and Golden Age Gym Festival in 2021. We also consider the option of postponement of the Trampoline Europeans till next year. But we wish the Continental Championships in the 3 other Olympic Disciplines (MAG, WAG & RG) to be held at the end of 2020 since we have Europeans next year as well. If we would not be able to organise them this year, they will just be cancelled. Unfortunately, the Organisers of WAG (Paris / France) & TRA (Gothenburg / Sweden) events are no longer able to hold the postponed competitions and we are now searching for new prospective hosts. TeamGym is originally scheduled for October 2020 and we hope to leave it as it is. We hope we will have more certain information by the end of this month. Of course, the final schedule of our events, in many respects, depends on a number of circumstances like when the countries allow their athletes to train, airplanes resume their flights, the countries lift the lockdown etc.

A number of key decisions were made at the Executive Committee Meeting of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) held via videoconference on April 9. The decisions of rescheduling of the Olympic qualifying events to 2021 and the remaining in force of the 2017-2020 Codes of Points in all Gymnastics disciplines until the end 2021, the acknowledgement of Qualification results of the Baku Artistic Gymnastics World Cup as final results, the amendment of the age eligibility criteria in the Olympic Qualification rules will now help the Federations to plan the trainings of their National Teams and get ready for the post-pandemic events we are all looking forward to.

The news of the gradual decrease in number of contaminated people in European countries, gives promises for a change for the better in the situation. I hope that this pandemic leaves as fast as it spread, and we will be together soon!  

With my warmest regards,

Dr. Farid GAYIBOV

European Gymnastics President