Classic games
ROME - The European Federation of Billiards (CEB) held the four-year congress in Rome on Saturday, elected a new president, a new Secretary-General and announced the plans for the future. The 56-year Swiss Diane Wild (20th of April 1960) will lead the biggest of four world confederations in carom billiards for the next four years. She already was a member of the European Federation and is most known as the organizer and president of the Lausanne Billard Masters organizer. Pierre Reynaert from France is the successor to Helmut Bierman as Secretary General of the CEB.
Diane Wild had announced her candidacy to follow the Dutchman Bennie Deegens as president. She won the election with 58 to 17 votes. Pierre Reynaert received 41 votes against 34 for Helmut Bierman. Also the Belgian Benny van Goethem, current interim chairman in his country, was elected to the board.
Diane Wild announced a new and forthcoming policy for the coming four years. In particular, she pleads for more innovations, transparency, consultation with federations, expansion of European championships, more attention for better and faster development of artistic billiard, 5 pins billiard and ladies billiard and as a spearhead the development and stimulation of youth billiard.
This is a summary (key points) of Diane's intention in terms of management, communication and sports.
,,First of all I will put the leading role of CEB in the forefront, namely to develop and promote billiard sport and offer the national federations a support for this promotion and development. (As it is written in the status...)''
,,Governance in the CEB and transparency in the board and with the federations are really primordial in my eyes. Democratic renewal is the central point, transparency is needed, it goes hand in hand with communication. The entire CEB board must be involved in the decisions and become a true team, working in a climate of trust and transparency. The entire Board must be aware of contracts, decision, the current opacity must fall.
If I am elected the first task for the board will be working on a program for the next four years that will be published.''
,,For good governance and transparency it is necessary to strengthen communication between CEB and federations. To achieve this I want to set up regular communication with the federations to be in direct contact. We need to share problems, success, best practice, propositions etc.. We have to work together for the same goals: the development of our sport.''
,,The youth is probably one of our most important challenges: attract new young players and keep them. We will have to find solution and propose some tools to the federations like organizing training week-ends, several small competitions, a ranking for juniors... But this will not be enough : we should work on three directions: visibility, formation and competition.''
1 Visibility: image, modern sport, social network website...
2 Formation: identify the different youth training systems of all the federations (the whole pyramid).
Make proposals on the basis of the most effective arrangements
Direct financial help to the federation
3 Competition (some examples that should be studied):
Do not limit the quota of participants per federation (currently 3)
Propose a calendar of youth competitions best suited to school calendars
Impose (for years without Brandenburg) the organization of youth competitions according to a perpetual calendar
Regroup youth events for years without Brandenburg
Transform EC U 19 into a national team event
Insert the 3-Cushion (and possibly the 5-pins) into the EC U19 team.
,,The European championship in Brandenburg an der Havel was a great success and, of course, must be organized in 2019 as already decided in the GA 2015. A full assessment by all stakeholders must be carried out in order to improve and develop this EC. This analysis must be made in all areas of the event including the format of the competitions.''
,,But this event is not enough! It is important to add competitions in our calendar and we should organize an European championship every year for all discipline. Regroup EC 3C individual and national teams for years without Brandenburg (that could be done in 5 days on 4 tables), the same should be done for the classical disciplines (6 days on 4 tables) etc...
Artistic billiard
,,Change cannot come from a commission without consultation. CEB must rely on the players and their representative, using existing experiences and statistics (coefficients). Another competition must be studied, in addition to the official competitions, to make this very spectacular discipline of our sport more interesting for the media.''
5 Pins
,,We must encourage Federations to promote 5-Pins, notably by promoting the exchanges between the federations for the specific training.''
Billiards for ladies
,,We must encourage Federations to promote Billiards for Ladies in all disciplines. For instance by helping federation which implement specific actions for Ladies and by organizing more competition...''
Referees
,,I would like also to conduct a discussion about arbitration and a technical evaluation of the arbitrators CEB to help them to progress.''
,,If we want to reach these goals and be attractive for Youth, Spectators and Sponsors we need to be more visible. This means that we have to make greater use of modern digital tools (website, social network...) and also we need to have more competition during the year.''
,,I want to work in a more professional way, especially by attaching the skills of experts for specific tasks. We must be a strong, respected and trusted institution.''
The new CEB board:
From left to right: Did Schintgen, Jean Pierre Guiraud, Diane Wild, Benny van Goethem, Carlos Borrell, Rainer Selgrath, Gabrio Volante and Pierre Reynaert.
