MastersRankings’ Preface: a goal of this news feature on our site is to help athletes. Organizations like World Masters Athletics (WMA), their regions and affiliates are dedicated to you. The report below shows how these organizations are working hard for our sport. Thank you Mr. Guzman and all of the dedicated, volunteer leadership within WMA.

Extraordinary AssemblyADEMA-FECOA-NCCWMA-WMA-IAAF

As many of you probably know, we had received several complaints from some Costa Rican Athletes regarding the following:

Among other things, they claim that each athlete was forced to travel in a specific travel agency in order to have the approval of ADEMA to participate in international meetings. But it happens that the appointed travel agency belongs to the husband of the current ADEMA president.

This represents a conflict of interests. Therefore we, as authorities, had to intervene because it contravenes the basic principles that govern our master movement and is totally against the philosophy of the WMA and the IAAF.

In San Jose, Costa Rica, we had two meetings, the first one was held in the FECOA offices (Costa Rican Athletics Federation), between FECOA , ADEMA (Costa Rican Masters Association) plus its council; Mr Stanley Perkins President of WMA, Mr. Cesar Moreno Bravo representing the IAAF Masters Commission and myself as NCCWMA President.

In this meeting we explained the situation and planned the contents of the second Meeting. The ADEMA president would chair the meeting and would clearly inform the way that ADEMA would proceed from now on.

The second meeting was an ADEMA Extraordinary Assembly, in which all the affiliated and unaffiliated athletes were convened, including those who did not agree with the current administration. Some athletes were afraid to speak because they felt that there could be reprisals with them. However, I promised them that this would not be so. I will protect them, I personally will be close to them.

Following this issue, we agreed the following:

1.-There will be no restriction for athletes to travel and stay in the best way that they choose.

2.-There will be a coordinated work between the Costa Rican Athletics Federation FECOA and the Costa Rican Association of Masters athletes ADEMA.

3.-A single membership fee will be agreed, at a lower cost to increase the participation of athletes. (So far ADEMA affiliates pay two memberships: to FECOA and to ADEMA)

4.-The Federation will have more openness and representation with all the masters athletes in order to improve their conditions.

5.-We recommended the creation of an Honor and Justice Commission, that should be chaired by someone of the highest moral quality and leadership, that allows reconciliation in existing disputes between athletes or between athletes and authorities.

As you can see this represents a success but I have to closely follow the development of the process in order to ensure that the agreements are properly achieved.

Best regards

Guillermo Guzmn, NCCWMA President

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