The board has during the passed financial year consisted of president Claës-L. Ljung (Sweden), vice president Dieter Kerbaum (Germany) until April 26th, vice president and secretary-general Fredy Moder (Switzerland) together with vice president Michel Nadji (France). Mrs Sabine Klettenhofer, Austria has as always taken good care of our FEGAT assets.

On April 26th Dieter Kerbaum announced his immediate withdrawal from his position in the FEGAT board. As our general assembly was not so far away the decision was taken to wait until the general assembly in June 2011 to find a successor. The FEGAT board thanks Dieter Kerbaum for his job for the amateur sport inside FEGAT! ,

The work performed in our committee has been productive and friendly. For me myself it has been a source of inspiration and an opportunity to meet with a lot of interesting people sharing my passion for horse racing. During the past fiscal year I have experienced good help from the committee and I also know that my colleagues in the board has been in contact with some of our members! This, I can assure you, is also the case for our secretary general and myself.

The 57th general assembly of the FEGAT was held in Mönchengladbach, Germany on Saturday the 27th of March in connection with the European Championships for Gentlemen drivers.
Fredy Moder from Swizerland was re-elected as vice president for the coming 3 years. Fredy Moder was also re-elected as secretary general for 1 year.
Sabine Klettenhofer was re-elected treasurer outside the board for 1 year.

Board meetings have been held on the following occasions during the past fiscal year:
In Mönchengladbach, Germany in connection with the European Championships for Gentlemen Drivers March 2010.
In Harstad, Norway in connection with the European Championships for Lady Drivers June 2010
In Paris, France in connection with the world championships in July. At this meeting also New Zealand and the US were present.

Between the secretary general and myself there has been contacts several times every week. I have also been in contact with the other two board members. The SKYPE program on Internet has been most helpful to give economic communication between us.

There have been technical contacts between non-FEGAT countries concerning the development of the amateur sport and legal advice for forming national organizations in Australia and New Zealand. There has also been questions about an even closer connection between the non-European countries and FEGAT.

During the year 2011 I have had contact with Poland in order to have them updated and informed. The sport is growing in Poland and one day they will probably want to enter our organization!

The championships

The EC for men was held in Germany 26th until 29th of March. We had 6 races in Mönchengladbach and every driver took part in 3 races. Champion became (again!) Christian Mayr from Austria (33 points) followed by Dicky Hof from The Netherlands (32 points) and Sandor Turbucz from Hungary (31 points).

The ladies version of the EC was held in the Norway. European Champion became Saara Sihvonen, Finland (42 points), the silver medal was taken by Beatrice Demoulin, Belgium (37 points) followed by bronze medal winner Åsa Svensson, Sweden (33 points). The championship took place in Harstad 11th until 13th of June. It was a magnificent arrangement where we had the possibility to meet the Midnight Sun as well as Norwegian hospitality!


WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS were held in France 2010. The first two races were held on the racetrack in Cabourg (20/7), then we went to Reims for two races (22/7) and the finals were held on the racetrack in Enghien where we drove two races as well. World Champion became Romain Poree, France with 63 points, vice World Champion was Mikael Pilenberg, Sweden with 62 points and bronze winner Carlos Cruellas Munar, Spain with 55 points. It was a very hard fight to crown the World Champion and the champion was not nominated until the last race passed the
winning post!!! It was a most interesting programme and we had the possibility to see a lot of France in only a few days.

Due to FEGAT rules (when WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS are held there is no FEGAT EUROPE CUP) there was no Fegat Cup in the year of 2010.

Friendly meetings between member countries are numerous. Many of these contests are brought up as ideas on FEGAT meetings when members have been talking off record – so is the birth of THE NORDIC CHAMPIONSHIPS as well as meetings between Russia and Sweden.

The FEGAT now has 15 members.
There is no immediate plans to enlarge the number of members, but of course we are open to discuss memberships as applications turn up.
 

As always in an organization like the FEGAT we have different engagement from different members. Some seems to sleep between our annual meetings and some have a very good contact with the board throughout the entire year. I think you can feel a little yourselves on which side you belong and remember that we in the FEGAT board like to have a close contact with every single member country!

Work in the board. The reviewed five-year plan for the work inside the FEGAT was taken on the general assembly 2010 and looks as follows:


RENEWED 5-YERS PLAN

1. The entire FEGAT shall try to find an international sponsor who will follow our championships and use the goodwill of the championships for their business promotion.

2. In general we shall try to reach a higher standard for our championships. Rules set up shall be followed. The prohibition of the use of the whip must be followed up by the organising nation.

3. The amount of races driven under FEGAT flag shall be expanded in the sense that there should be national or friendship races with the FEGAT name.. Press releases, starting lists and results must be forwarded to our secretariat. The FEGAT name must be given more importance. Our secretariat stands willing to provide all addresses and contacts necessary to make this possible.

4. Within the frames of our economy and with possibilities we know of we will make promotion for the FEGAT over the Internet and over our homepage. Every country is responsible for finding sponsors who will have advantage of our homepage and who are willing to pay a sum for this. In our homepage we will give the opportunity for interested sponsors to add a link to their homepage.

5. Economy: we must be able to keep the standards of today and hopefully raise them. One way to do this is by better economy.

6. We will help to act as intermediary in finding practice jobs for interested persons with the aim to give tuition to young, horse-interested people.

7. FEGAT will create a memorandum for championships stating what the organizer is obliged to do during the event.

8. Contact other European trotting nations such as. Estonia, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Malta, Serbia (Yugoslavia), Croatia, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia to open up a contact net and have them informed about our work inside FEGAT. Also point out that we can be of help with for example statutes and exchange between nations.

9. Tie Australia, Canada, New Zealand and USA closer to FEGAT.

I hope that you will read the 9 points above with a little self-criticism. Have you as a member fulfilled what you are expected to do? The points 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 are paragraphs for us all – what have you done the last year???

To all of you I want to express my gratitude for the passed year. Despite big differences in the possibilities for the sport, in culture and character the FEGAT stands strong. We have been able to give and to take in a way that makes us all to feel like winners.

I feel especially happy that we now have reached a point were all members are carrying out their duties with arrangements in the scheduled way! This is now also true for the world championships – New Zealand will organize in January 2012.

I also want to use this opportunity to say thank you to the amateurs in Germany for the gentlemen’s EC and Norway for taking care of the ladies EC. Also a thank you to France for hosting the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS.


FEGAT of today

FEGAT is the only umbrella organization for harness amateurs throughout the world. Overseas nations search our aid and maybe we should widen the sphere and have a worldwide branch to give everyone a possibility for shelter. These are current issues for the board to work with!


As always:
As president of the FEGAT I thank you all for your devoted support to the board and to myself! Our FEGAT is an organization that is met with respect in the trotting world and I am proud to hold the rudder in my hand!
 

Thank you!

Always be proud
to be a member of the
FEGAT!
 

Fegen May 29th 2011

Claës-L. Ljung
President