WMA General Assembly Meets in Gothenburg

Every two years, the World Masters Athletics General Assembly meets during the Outdoor Championships.

In 2024, the meeting took place on August 16, the first non-competition day of the Championships. The 102 delegates represented countries from around the world; each country has a minimum of one delegate while those with the greatest participation in recent championships, including the U.S. can have as many as five (5) delegates. The American delegates were Jerry Bookin-Weiner, Colleen Barney, Perry Jenkins, Mary Rosado, and Robert Thomas.

The agenda consisted of the following key elements:

Submission of reports from the Officers
Election of Honorary Members
Election of WMA President and Treasurer
Report on Bids for 2027 (Indoor) and 2028 (Outdoor) Championships
Amendments to the WMA Constitution, By-Laws, and Rules of Competition

Of particular interest to USATF Masters athletes and officials were the last four items. Four Americans were presented with Honorary WMA Bronze Pins for their service to WMA and Masters Athletics – Marilyn Mitchell (a long-time WMA and USATF MTF officer and athlete), Mary Rosado (one of the Team Managers for Non-Stadia Events and multiple WMA Championships and a long-time member of the WMA Anti-Doping Committee), Bill Murray (member of the WMA Competition Committee and coordinator for Combined Events for WMA), and Jerry Bookin-Weiner (MTF Chair for his role in securing the bid from Gainesville/Alachua County for the 2025 WMA Indoor Championships).

WMA President Margit Jungmann from Germany was re-elected to a second term as President (unopposed), and Colleen Barney from the USA was elected to the Treasurer’s position to replace Jean Thomas from France who was term limited. Both Margit and Colleen will serve four-year terms.

The WMA Council, which consists of the officers and the presidents of the seven WMA regions, reported that there were no expressions of interest received for the 2027 WMA Indoor Championships; they urged the delegates to talk with potential local organizing committees about bidding for the indoor championships. They also reported that four expressions of interest had been received for the 2028 Outdoor Championships, with two progressing to formal submissions. However, neither of those submissions was deemed worthy of consideration by the Assembly at this time, and so there were no bids to present. The Council requested the Assembly to empower it to screen and act on bids that may come in, as was done in the case of the 2025 Indoor Championships that the Council awarded to Gainesville, Florida, USA. The Assembly agreed to this proposal.

After lunch, the Assembly turned to discussion of rule change proposals, some of them growing out of a study on the hurdle races undertaken after the last General Assembly in Tampere in 2022. The study group recommended some rather radical changes, however the only ones accepted were:

Change the M80+ and W70+ indoor 60m hurdles to 5 hurdles with 11.00m run in, 6.00m between hurdles and 25.00m to finish line.
Change the M80+ and W70+ outdoor hurdles to 8 hurdles with 11.00m run in, 6.00m between hurdles and 27.00m to the finish line.

These changes will take effect from January 1, 2026.

Other proposals that were adopted included one to start keeping records for the women’s decathlon (but not to include it in the WMA Championships), a set of tie breaking rules for combined events, a change to the progression rules for vertical jumps in mixed age and gender competitions, and a rule to keep records for the mixed gender 4x200m relay indoors.

Proposals to relax bent knee rules for race walkers over age 65 and to add a variety of relays to the WMA program were all rejected.

Revisions to the WMA Constitution and By-Law process took up much of the afternoon session. They were the result of a multi-year process to bring the Constitution and By-Laws in line with each other. While the proposal was for a total revision of the Constitution, very little was actually changed – the document was re-ordered and a handful of new provisions added. The introduction to the proposed changes reads:

In keeping with worldwide trends, Masters Athletics has developed and diverged from the way in which the organization operates under its current Constitution. New challenges have arisen for its administration. The fundamental framework set by the Constitution should reflect this process.

Instead of introducing bits and pieces at every General Assembly, a global review has been undertaken with the following principles in mind:

To allow for a more flexible reaction to current matters, the Executive branch is to be reorganized and empowered.
The legislative foundation of the Membership and the General Assembly remain largely untouched, but the Regions are given a constitutional status, with rights and duties.
A third branch, which is judicial in nature, is created as a fundamentally autonomous body.
A separate body is set up to distinguish medical authority from the executive branch.

Pursuant to these principles:

All rules, regulations, and operational processes of WMA shall be contained in the By-Laws and fall under the authority of the Council and the, rather vague, category of Formal Policy is institutionalized as Decrees-in-Council.
Therefore, the provisions of the Constitution may be restricted to the fundamentals and conceivably valid for at least a decade.
Within the Council, a Board of the five elected individuals is formally introduced to undertake day-to-day management.
The Board is assisted by Committees, the role of which is defined in the Constitution.
The Board is further assisted by Managers, who are in charge of implementing policies.
The power to sanction is transferred from the executive branch to a Judicial Panel, staffed with members who shall act as judges and shall have a degree in law or equivalent. The Panel shall hear cases along strict guidelines while respecting the rights of the parties involved.
A Medical Panel will have its proceedings conducted in strict medical confidence, by members having a degree in medicine, biology, or equivalent.
The Chair of each Panel are to be appointed by the Council with the remaining members co-opted by current Panel members, which was a midway solution between an election by the General Assembly and an appointment by the Council.
The Council still has the ability to conciliate a claim during the pendency of a matter before the Judicial Panel.
A number of editorial and minor substantial modifications are introduced.
The structure of the Constitution is reordered to better show its structure within parliamentary democracy.

The practical impact of this is to give more authority to the WMA Council, which will now be able to act on Rule Change proposals from the Competition Committee without taking each one to the General Assembly. This will both streamline the process and insulate WMA against Rule Change proposals coming from the floor and making significant changes without measured consideration by the Competition Committee that must implement the changes.

The entire package was approved by the General Assembly, and the new Constitution took effect on August 26, 2024, after the conclusion of the 2024 WMA Stadia Championships. The next step is for the Council to revise the existing By-Laws, which is scheduled for completion by January 31, 2025.

The next General Assembly will meet at the WMA Outdoor Championships in Daegu, South Korea in 2026 – the dates for that meet are August 22 – September 3, 2026.

NOTE: This Summary also appears in the October-November 2024 issue of National Masters News.