Federation of International Bandy, FIB, held it’s 65th annual congress in Vänersborg in connection with the World Championships. It was a great mix of old and new bandy nations that participated. The four nations that founded FIB 1955, Sweden, Russia, Norway and Finland participated as well as new nations like Great Britain. FIB President Boris Skrynnik greeted everyone welcome, especially all new delegates and thanked Vänersborg for arranging the World Championships in a good way.
Stig Bertilsson, chairman of the Swedish Bandy Federation was chairman of the meeting.The congress was conducted in the traditional spirit with regular questions on the agenda. Before the congress ended some special presentations were made:
- FIB webmaster and editor, Kjell Anderstedt, presented the new website and informed about the ambitions to make a website with interesting and trustworthy content, easy navigation and quick updates, especially during FIB’s tournaments. He stressed the importance of having a qualitative website as a hub of global operations so that FIB-information and news from member nations can easily be reached in one place.
- Olle Modin, chairman of Rules and Referee-committee, presented how he works with especially the referees. He was very pleased that the number of female referees is increasing and that the female referees do not only lead women games, but now also get assignments to male games. He mentioned, for example, Kristina Prokofyeva from Russia who, a few weeks ago, made her debut in the Russian highest league, Super League, as a referee. This was applauded fresh at the congress.
- Attila Adamfi, chairman of the Olympic committee, together with Knut Sörensen, talked about the work of convincing the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, that bandy must of course be picked up in the Olympic program. They told the Congress that FIB now is working in many ways to get the IOC to see that it’s obvious that the bandy is very entitled to join the Olympics.