Oceania Triathlon

Council Meeting, Wellington.

The Oceania Council had our annual face-to-face meeting recently in Wellington following the ITU Oceania Championships.  Geoff, Juliet and Jenny were joined by Terry Sheldrake as the OTU Development Officer, Stephen Damien from Papua New Guinea Triathlon was welcomed as an observer to the meeting, and Michael Flynn from Triathlon Australia was invited to assist with planning the 2012 event calendar. 

Discussions included:

- Timeframes and process for the 2012 Oceania Triathlon Union calendar
- An approach to have an Oceania Cup in an island national federation outside of Australia and New Zealand.
- A 2011 Oceania Congress
- Requirements for hosting an Oceania event from 2012.
In the coming months we will distribute plans to have an Oceania Congress via teleconference with delegates of each of our member national federations in the second half of the year.   Only financial members of the ITU and OTU will be permitted to have a delegate attend and vote at this congress, we will be distributing a list of all current members shortly.
The weekend also proved a valuable opportunity for Council members to meet informally with representatives from Triathlon Australia and Triathlon New Zealand, and with Stephen Damien officiating the Oceania Championships as a direct outcome of completing the 2009 ITU Level 1 technical course in Rarotonga.

Call for 2012 Oceania Events

National Federations who have paid their 2011 ITU affiliation fees are asked to submit their key event dates for the 2012 calendar year to the ITU Oceania Representative by the 31st of March 2011 via email to Jenny.Mann@triathlon.org .  These key dates should include national championship level events and other major triathlon events. 
The Oceania Triathlon Union will then collate and distribute these dates to assist with avoiding date clashes for major triathlon events in our region. Following this we will call for expressions of interest from member NFs to host our 2012 Oceania events.  These events will include the OTU Oceania Olympic Distance Championships, OTU Oceania Sprint Distance Championships, OTU Oceania Long Distance Championships, OTU Oceania Duathlon Championships, and OTU Continental Cups over the sprint and Olympic distances.
The Oceania Triathlon Union will be endeavouring to work to the following timeframes:
• 31st March 2011 OTU Council call to Oceania NFs for key event dates for 2012, to be received by 30th April 2011.
• 15th May 2011 key event dates of Oceania NFs circulated with a call for expressions of interest for OTU races, submissions to be received from Oceania NFs by 31st May 2011.
• 15th June 2011 following assessment by OTU Council proposed 2012 Oceania event calendar sent to ITU, for approval by 30th June 2011.
• 30th June 2011 OTU Council to contact NFs with approved Oceania events, with event contracts to be signed by 31st July.
• 1st August 2011, 2012 Calendar of events to be announced.

Oceania Website

To encourage member federations and individual members to access the Oceania Triathlon Union website, the Regional Representative’s quarterly updates will now be available on the news page of this website, rather than emailed to each member federations.  This will also enable individual members, coaches, technical officials and competitors to be aware of the activities happening in our region.

Level 3 ITU Technical Course, Bali

The ITU have invited 8 technical officials from the Oceania region to attend an Oceania and Asian ITU Level 3 Technical course in Bali from the 15th to 17th April 2011. 
Attendees will be New Zealand’s Terry Sheldrake, Ross Capill, Juliet Fahey, and Peter Weaver.  Technical Officials from Australia attending will be Murray Hilder, Jacqui Kenny, Frank Stapleton, Stuart Fuller.

Level 1 ITU Technical & Events Course, Solomon Islands

  
Congratulations to Australia’s Murray Hilder who has been appointed to facilitate the ITU Level 1 Technical & Events course in Solomon Islands.  Murray Hilder joined fellow technical and coaches from Oceania in attending an ITU Facilitators Course in Auckland late last year, which equipped Murray with the skills and background required to take on this position, and facilitate sport development in the region.

ITU Executive Board Meeting, London

The ITU Executive Board had a meeting in London from the 31st March to the 2nd April, attended by both Jenny as Oceania Regional Representative, Australia’s Bill Walker as an ITU Vice President, and Terry Sheldrake as an ITU Board member.  Discussions included suggested changes to the International Triathlon Union Constitution, more details will be made available to member federations in the near future, and this will be an agenda item at the ITU Congress at the ITU World Championships Series Grand Final in Beijing in early September.

We look forward to catching up with some of you at the opening race if the Dextro Energy World Championship Series in Sydney on the 10th of April.

Cheers

Jenny Mann
ITU Oceania Representative
Jenny.Mann@triathlon.org