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Exclusive: Lawyers called in as rift grows in Oceania weightlifting Tuesday, 4 May 2021
The Oceania Weightlifting Federation (OWF) is refusing a demand from its own members for elections to be held at an Extraordinary Congress.
The date for the Extraordinary Congress - which was requested by nine nations who appear to be unhappy with the way the sport is governed by their continental federation - has been set by the OWF for July 24, the opening day of competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Oceania s 22 member federations were informed of the date last week, more than a month after the OWF first received a formal request to hold an Extraordinary Congress, and only after it had taken legal advice.
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Tuesday, 23 February 2021
Leading candidates for the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) Presidency from the United States, China and Greece have endorsed a call to move the IWF’s elections to online-only.
Strong complaints about the unfair elections are made in a five-page submission from the national weightlifting federations of Samoa and Fiji, whose delegates cannot travel to the planned hybrid electoral Congress scheduled for March 26 and 27 in Istanbul.
They want the elections to be held virtually, with no delegates attending in person.
The IWF Interim President, Mike Irani, is among those candidates who will be affected by travel restrictions.
There are no flights to Turkey from Britain, Brazil, South Africa and Denmark.
IWF delays Congress after agreeing to need for completely new constitution Friday, 22 January 2021
The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) has moved it s two-day Constitutional Congress back by a month, but will go ahead with elections as planned in the last week of March.
The decision has been made because so much work is needed on improving the IWF s governance - one of the areas in which it has been criticised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The sport’s Olympic status is under constant review by the IOC after a series of corruption scandals and concerns over doping.
Last October, after the IWF Board ousted its reformist Interim President Ursula Papandrea of the United States, the IOC said it stressed the critical importance of continuing reforms within the IWF in order to ensure the independence of its anti-doping operations and the modernisation of its governance and management structures .