This past week was the 63rd FAI plenary meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina. February 7-12, 2012. Here’s the changes coming for this year…
They had major rule changes to propose for acceptance by the Plenary, both for the Distance and the Speed events. These relate to safety for the competitors and came out of the competitors meeting in Klatovy at the European Championships and World Cup, had been tested by the advisors to the committee and discussed at great length before being presented here. For distance it was proposed that the changes come into effect this year for the Mondial as there is plenty of time for competitors to train with the new rules, the new Speed rules would come into effect next year.

Distance – it is proposed that water is dragged through the entry gate, that there be 5 gates and each gate is set at 1.5 meters. Extension would result in a 0 score. There was a lot of discussion from the floor, particularly from the French Delegation who are very opposed to the introduction of dragging through the first gate, which they consider to be unsafe. The Speed course from 2013 will be a straight course, water must be dragged through 1 – 4 gates and there will be a 0 score for not dragging. The committee also proposed that the world record rules be changed, so that Competition records be under the new rules, but Performance Records be under the old.(from plenary notes)

Keeping in line with these IPC changes, we’ll continue running the “new” distance event, and go back to the “old” carving speed event starting with FLCPA meet #2.