Correspondence from the President of the WTGF

The following correspondence was sent to Team Managers and Country Representatives as an update on the situation regarding the 20th World Transplant Games in Mar Del Plata, Argentina.

Dear Members of WTGF

For many weeks now we have been receiving your messages of concern regarding the organisation and final arrangements for the Games in Mar del Plata. The Council and Executive share your concerns and we would like to take this opportunity to clarify some points for you.

Since the original Agreement was signed with the LOC, the management and control of the event has been changed from the local team in Mar del Plata to the National Ministry of Sport of the Argentine Government in Buenos Aires. One senior person from the new team has visited the Australian National Games in 2014 to gain some experience of our events and our General Secretary Gary Green has visited Buenos Aires at the end of 2014 also to get to know the new team.

We had hoped that both of those visits would allow us to have better and more regular communication with the LOC in order to advance the process – sadly this has not been the case and we have experienced many delays in receiving replies to our messages. We have tried to have regular teleconferences with the LOC but these have proved difficult.

That said, the new registration system has now been completed by WTGF and we await one final confirmation from the LOC of the prices for the various categories before we can agree with them to launch it. On the subject of the Games website, we are in constant communication with the LOC to fix some of the errors – although we understand that many will have seen the draft version on social media which has not yet received the final confirmation from WTGF despite our many requests and suggestions for correcting and improving the site.

We know that many have reserved flights to Buenos Aires and we take this opportunity to confirm that within the Agreement is provision for bus transfers from the international airport to Mar del Plata for those that require it. Otherwise, there are internal flights but there are not so many and the times may not be suitable for many teams – so the bus transfer is the recommended one.

All we can tell you today on behalf of the Council and Executive of WTGF is that we are doing all that we can – and we have done over many months -to expedite the information to you – to ensure that the Games are run in accordance with our best practice and to inform the LOC of the urgent need for constant communication.

We are keeping the pressure up and ask for your patience once again whilst we continue working with the LOC.

Yours sincerely

Olivier Coustere on behalf of Council and Executive of WTGF