FGG Sports Inclusion and Retention Policy/Plan/Schedule 2004
General Description
Eurika Otto and Roger Brigham will be spearheading this project for the next year, and we all will be a part of it.
This proposed policy will be up for adoption by the Sports Committee at the Koeln DE annual meeting November 2004.
We really need input from a wide variety of sports people because of the complexity of the evaluation process.
If you know of academic or professional sports people who would be interested in participating in this project,
please have them contact us.
The plan is to start accepting applications for changes to the our current list of core & addtional sports by the
2005 Annual Meeting. The ideal target is to have a final list of sports in place for the 2010 Gay Games RFP.
However, before we start this evaluation process cold, we will be self evaluating our current core and additional
sports using this adopted policy. Until we have 'benchmarked' our current sports, we will not be effective in
evaluating other sports. This will be an intensive educational process as we hash out metrics, values, and 'tune'
the policy.
The mission of the Gay Games, Inclusion, Participation, and Personal Best, sounds easy until you look for quantitative
criteria.
The Olympics have had an easier time of measuring Citius Altius Fortius (swifter, higher, stronger),
but how do you measure 'enhanced accomodation/outreach'? The challenge for us will be to develop a process that not only evalutes
a sport in isolation, but also as part of the entire Gay Games. If we do our job properly, we would expect that
there would NOT be significant changes to our current list of core and additional sports. After all, what would a
Gay Games be without the core sports reflected in the Olympics (e.g.. track&field, aquatics, etc...). However the process will strengthen our understanding and appreciation for what we have created, and how to keep it
vibrant.
In 1994, NYC and The Federation added Women's Wrestling to Gay Games IV , 10 years before the IOC added it to the
2004 Athens Games.
In 2002, Sydney and the Federation adopted a TransGender Policy that encompassed what the IOC adopted in 2004.
Lets continue in that bold tradition: Gay Games Can Change the World.
Watch this space for further announcements.