IBU History

10 Years International Biathlon Union

Almost ten years ago, on the second of July 1993, the International Biathlon Union (IBU) was founded. This occurred when the National Biathlon Union in London/Heathrow decided to exclude Biathlon from the World federation UIPMB (Union de Pentathlon Moderne et Biathlon), which it had been a part of since 1953, causing Biathlon to their own international federation.
During the founding congress the new federation elected their executive committee and the 57 existing members of the UIPMB were automatically transferred to the IBU. Still, it wasn't until
August 1998 when the executive committee of the international Olympic committee acknowledged the IBU as an independent international Olympic winter sport federation. In the same year the GAISF (General Assembly International Sports Federations) declared the IBU as a proper member.

Registration and legal status of the IBU
In June 1999 the IBU settled in Salzburg, Austria. The after Austrian law on association's necessary constituent general meeting was held in Minsk, Belarus in September 1999. A working partnership with UNESCO in Paris was established, as their most important component since 1999 are yearly united development projects for the sport biathlon in the framework of existing UNESCO programmes, underneath the closer roof of the CIGEPS (Conseil International Governmental de I'education physique et du sport). In the year 2000 the IBU fulfilled the legal conditions of a non-state-organisation after an Austrian federal law and further was awarded this status by means of answer by the Austrian Federal Ministry for foreign affairs.

Administration
In August 1993 a Secretary-General was appointed, with a secretary added to the staff in 1995. Since the 1997-98 season, a world-cup-coordinator has been in place in order to keep standards high and further support the aligners. Before the 2002-03 season this sports coordinator was promoted to sports director. In order to keep up with the times, the IBU installed for the part of Communication and Media and for the Partner and Supplier Area the position of a
Communication Director in April 2001.
Additionally, in March 2001 the chairman of the IBU Legal Committee is responsible for all legal interests as legal advisor for the IBU.

IBU Budget
Through astute negotiations with the European Television Union (EBU) and the sponsor APF it has been possible to raise the IBU Budget from practically nothing in the early years to a substantial amount in just a few years. Even in more difficult economic times the IBU has proven to be on save levels (see chart).
As shown in the graphs of the federation activity of the IBU, it was in the sense of the non-profit ideology that the IBU's income would be spread among the athletes of the world and especially to those who had lost the most through the end of the Soviet Union. The IBU's administrative expenses have stayed small and modest. The financial reserve that has been accumulated is just large enough to make up for possible losses in income, as would occur in a cancellation of the Olympic Games, due to the constant threats from terror. This is indispensable for the protection of independence and autonomous survivability of biathlon.

Federation activity
The most important organ of the IBU according to its constitution is the congress that is held every two years. The first IBU congress after its founding, was held in 1994 at Salzburg. Since then, 4 more congresses have been held in Östersund, Sweden, Salzburg, Austria, Calgary, Canada, and Nice, France. The sixth congress is scheduled for Varna, Bulgaria. The first extensive board meeting took place in August 1993 in Darmstadt, Germany. Since then 50 board meetings have been held.

Following are some of the highlights of the various IBU since its inception:


THE BATTLE against doping
From the beginning, the IBU was in the forefront in the fight against doping. In addition to the doping test that was conducted at competitions, tests were also ordered for training sessions in the 1993-94 season. The IBU was also one of the first federations to use blood controls. In February 1994 the medical committee and the executive committee held the first discussions regarding blood doping controls. The 1994 congress decided to make biathletes available to the IOC for trial tests and blood controls. The first blood IBU control was made within an extensive blood series at the 1994 World Cup in Badgastein, Austria. This blood series of Phase I was finished in1997. In the 1997-98 season, as part of Phase II, they began to measure Hematocrit values. For health reasons athletes would be prohibited from competing when their values were too high. During the 1998 Olympic Winter Games, the IOC allowed the IBU to do blood controls on all participating athletes. In the 2000-01 season a contract was made between WADA(World Anti Doping Agency) and IDTM(International Doping Test Management) regarding doping controls outside competitions. Since then, EPO tests have been carried out by the IBU. These efforts by the IBU are strongly supported by all athletes. Athletes ask for even more and tougher tests. Surely the strong anti doping campaigns are the reason that positive doping tests within training controls have become a rarity in national federations and IBU competitions. To date there has only been one positive case found.

Nature of Competition
Since the foundation of the IBU, seven world championships for men and women as well as ten world champion-
ships for juniors have been held. Two world championships for the youth category have also been held starting in 2002.
From the beginning of the IBU to date, 84 World Cups have been successfully staged. Likewise, since 1994-95 European championships for senior and junior classes have been conducted. Europa Cup championships for these classes have also been held since the foundation of the IBU. Hochfilzen, Austria hosted the first summer biathlon world championships in the summer of 1996. . During the 1999-2000 season the IBU assumed the management of archery biathlon from FITA. Since 2002, archery biathlon world cups and world championships are being held.
The pinnacle, of course, is the Olympic Winter Games every four years. After the IBU's founding year, biathlon , there were three competitions for both men and women. In the 2006 Olympic Winter Games, that number of biathlon competitions will rise to five for both women and men.

Financial bonuses formember foundations
After securing a financial base in the first year of its existence, it was possible for the IBU to fulfil their philosophical and make the most money possible available for the national federations and the sport itself.
During the 2002-03 season 2,7Mio EURO were made available as bonuses for competition participation, financial and material help as in development programmes, bonuses for events, free access of a data and result service, free execution of the accreditation, etc..

REWARDS
In the 1994-95 season prize money awards at World cup events was still very modest. First prize was 1500DM, second 1000DM and 500DM for third place.
Last season over 1,69Mio EURO prize money was made available by the IBU.

Partners and equipment contracts
In 1996, as part of the IBU development project, partnership contracts were established with some companies, which supplied free material and equipment, to the less fortunate member federations. Now, the IBU has five companies with partnership contracts and fifteen companies with equipment contracts. These contracts insure that the IBU can supply free clothing and equipment of good quality in large quantities to the national federations. During the season of 2002-03 the IBU was fortunate enough to establish a partnership with VW-Sponsoring which made it possible to make VW-Busses available for most of the teams taking part in IBU competitions. The IBU will be able to continue this service for the upcoming season.

Data and Timing services
In 1995 the executive committee discussed the issue of time keeping, data processing, data communication to television and result production, with a goal of bringing all up to the same standard. It was considered to hire a professional computer and time keeping company at IBU expense. Still, it took some time until Siwidata was hired for World Cups in the 1997-98 season. This was a very successful step, as World Cups got a uniform look and spectators at home, with appropriate graphics, received good and clear information. Since1999-2000 Siwidata has also been used at world championships and now even at the junior and youth world championships, European championships and Europa Cups. Over the years Siwidata has continued to develop their system. New ideas for information and technical standards were brought in and now, at IBU events, an optimal result and information system is available for spectators, trainers, teams, TV commentators live at the location as well as for the millions of spectators at home. During the past season, based on the experience of recent years, the TV-graphic-layout was optimized and refreshed, transforming the TV-appearance to a fresh and modern face.

Media outfit of the competitions
In the course of the 1994 Olympic Games ideas from specialists at Norwegian television NRK and others about competition rules were discussed in order to make the sport more media friendly and understandable on television. At first the IBU Technical Committee was hesitant as they were afraid that the established concept of biathlon would be endangered by these alterations. Soon, they realised that effective presentation and the tradition of biathlon could be coordinated, and hence, this became the most important carrier for reforms in the IBU next to the executive committee. The meeting of the technical committee and the executive committee therefore was in the name of the reforms. With the permission of the congress of 2002 the most recent improvements through these meetings now make way for a phase of perfecting and consolidating.
An important cornerstone was the introduction of new types of competitions. During the 1996-97 season of the Chase Start (pursuit) competitions were first introduced to World Cups and World Championships. This kind of competition was a hit with spectators, due to its dramatic nature and greatly enhanced the competitions offered in biathlon. In 1998 the IOC therefore made the respective steps to include the pursuit start into the programme of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. Shortly thereafter in 1997-98, test events with a mass start were held. With the finals at the World Cup Final in Novosibirsk/RUS they weren't all too successful. In 2001 after modifications the request was made to the IOC to take the mass start competition up into the programme of the Olympic Games. Although failure of technical details of this sort of competition was obvious, it was still accepted. The IOC accepted the mass start competition into the programme of the 2006 Olympic Winter Games. We now have a modern and well accepted competition program, as a result of constant revisions and the input from the athletes and trainers

Internet – Website
In 1995 the executive committee initiated a test of the internet usage targeting communications within the IBU. The office of the IBU was connected to the WWW in 1996, and since communicates more and more of the federation's business in this manner.
In 1998 the IBU website was installed together with Siwidata (www.ibu.at) and after only a short period, this information platform became very popular. Siwidata kept the data on the IBU website up to date, which was a great step forward in spreading biathlon results. It was up to the newly installed communications director to optimize the website and in 2001 to lay he framework for the project "biathlonworld.com" with the EBU. In 2001-2002 technical conditions were set for the transformation of the IBU website. Now www.biathlon.com is a world wide hot spot that always shows up to date news, and now has to keep up with a humongous amount of traffic.

Event managers meetings
In October 1994, in Antholz/ITA the first event managers meeting was held out of the need to introduce organisation committees, TV-producers and sponsor companies to each other in order to energise co-ordinations and cooperation between them. The national federations and organisation committees in cooperation with the IBU, invests large sums in order to keep competition facilities up to the most modern standards and further to make competition technically perfect. The tenth event manager meeting was recently held in Ruhpolding/GER.

Accreditation
In the 2001-02 season the IBU saved the aligners a lot of work and anger through the use of the company PLARAS that made a centralisation and optimisation of the accreditation at all IBU events possible.

IBU publications
Naturally the IBU needed something like a speaker to the world, and so together with modern pentathlon at the end of 1998 the "UIPMB report" was released. Here, biathlon activity and development could be illustrated. From 1999 onwards an official publication of the IBU, the "magazine", was released twice a year until the end of 2001. Since 2002 the official magazine got a facelift and layout change in order fit in with the website name, hence it is now "Biathlonworld". In preparation for the Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer a "Biathlon Guide" was created out of the blue. The following winter this was transformed into a biathlon calendar. The calendar is still released annually on time before the season. The IBU calendar comes in a handy format and shows most important information. It has become a handy tool for the biathlon and is very much appreciated by media representatives, national and international federations as well as the public.
1995 a pocketbook was being discussed in which all rules and regulations of biathlon would be included. It wasn't until 1998 when this was realised and now any user of this book is able to view the most important documents of the IBU in a handy format.

EpilogUE
Luckily the IBU has been fortunate enough to be spared of any greater disasters within its 10 year existence. When there were snow problems, competitions have been held in different places through the cooperation with other organisation committees. Only one competition had to be cancelled because of too much snow!
In 10 years of the IBU's existence, all of these collective measures and activities show an extremely positive result. It can be said that biathlon has developed to a "spectator's hot spot", with many top athletes from stellar national federations. It is an interesting and exciting winter sport that sometimes equals a crime film and a sport that gives its TV-spectators good up-to-date information. This all leads to the fact that biathlon is the winter sport with highest TV-ratings in Europe.
We hope that the IBU will retain its high standards and keep developing to give millions of spectators, and even more countries in the world, joy and relaxation with clean and attractive sport.