World Sailing - Kim Andersen elected President, Grael a Vice-President

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com NZ on 13 Nov 2016 Kim Andersen (DEN) has been elected President of World Sailing for a four year term.

The election has just concluded at the General Assembly of the World body of the sport of Sailing, held in in Barcelona, Spain.

The four yearly Meeting was chaired by His Majesty King Constantine and voting process conducted by David Kellett (AUS). Constantine was notable for the humour with which he conducted the Meeting, refusing pleas for the delegates to get first pass at the food for lunch, telling them that there 'will be no lunch until you are finished here!'

The 99 registered delegates had the choice of voting for one of three candidates - incumbent President Carlo Croce (ITA), Kim Andersen (DEN) and Paul Henderson (CAN). Henderson is a former President of the world body serving from 1996-2004. A President is eligible to serve two four year terms.

To be elected a candidate has to receive over 50% of the votes cast. A request from the floor for the candidates to address the meeting was declined by David Kellett.

In the first round of voting no candidate received 50% of the votes and a second round was held between the two highest polling competitors - Kim Andersen and Carlo Croce.

In the first vote Kim Andersen received 44 votes, Carlo Croce 43 votes and Paul Henderson 11 votes.

In the second vote Kim Andersen received 52 votes and Carlo Croce 46 votes.

Given that 45 MNA's nominated Carlo Croce for President for a second term, it is usual for those countries to support their nominee. There were 99 MNA's present for the vote of which 98 seem to have voted.

Pre-election it was expected that if the voting went to a run-off then those from the eliminated candidate would vote against Croce by putting their vote to the remaining candidate.

That would appear to have happened with Croce getting his nomination vote. Paul Henderson was nominated by/had pre meeting support from about 10 MNAs and held that vote in the first round.

In the second round it appears that the transfer of the majority of Henderson's support to Anderson was sufficient to tip the Dane over the required 50% threshold.

The voting is by a manual process requiring a printed ballot paper which was distributed to the delegates - one from each country, and each country has a single vote regardless of numbers of registered sailors, financial contribution or other criteria. The vote process and counting is overseen by a scrutineering committee comprising former Presidents and Vice Presidents of World Sailing. The voting process took over 30 minutes, and at least twice that for the Vice Presidential voting and counting.

A country or Member National Authority must be represented by one of its number, at the meeting. Proxy voting is not permitted.

Andersen (59) had been Chairman of World Sailing's Equipment Committee and was a Council member for eight years (2000-2008) on the then International Sailing Federation.

He spent his early sailing career in the Flipper, Fireball, 470, 505, Flying, Dutchman, Dragon and Danish one designs, before going on to represent Denmark in more than 20 World and European Championships.

To view his website click here

Voting then took place for the seven Vice-Presidents, who along with the President form the Board of World Sailing. There were 15 candidates for the seven positions, at least two of which must be women. Those elected as Vice Presidents were - Jan Dawson (NZL) and Ana Sanchez (ESP), Torben Grael (BRA), *Gary Jobson (USA), *Quanhai Li (CHN), *W Scott Perry (URU) and Nadine Stegenwalner (GER).

Three existing Vice-Presidents (marked * above) were re-elected with a fourth Chris Atkins (GBR) failing to win re-election.

To see the full candidate list and voting process click here

Earlier it was decided that Mexico will host the 2017 Annual Conference and Sarasota, Florida, USA will host the 2018 meeting.