This time I want to tell you how our actions in the past year will affect the future of the FCI. I am not saying it is not important to summarise our achievements and to explain why we proceeded in a certain way, but I want to talk about our future as an international organisation, but most important about the future of our dogs worldwide.

Three aspects have been transcendental during the past year; cooperation and collaboration, innovation and preparation for the future. These three aspects will lead our organisation for the next year.

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Rafael de Santiago
FCI President
FCI Agility Commission – Activity Report

Agility is still the most important sport under the roof of the FCI and at this kind of sport we do have the only one international youth event, which is called Junior European Open Championship (JEO). On the other hand, we do have the European Open for adults (EO) and the World Champions (WAC).

JEO

In 2016, more than 480 kids und juniors from 21 different national canine organisations participated in the JEO, which took place in a great area (x-bionic@ sphere) in Čilistov / Slovakia. Already impressive was the entrance of the area, with a huge sculpture of a metal horse. It is wonderful to see, how the kids and juniors do not have any language barrier, they communicate with each other, they exchange their T-shirts, they make friends and they keep friendship worldwide, without any borders in their mind, wherever they are from and, besides, they show excellent sport.

© J. Fischer

The winners were:

Children Small Egor Zvorigin (Russia)
Children Medium Antonia Lüthl (Switzerland)
Children Large Egor Zvorigin (Russia)

Junior Small Zdenek Smrcek (Czech Republic)
Junior Medium Barbara Stachova (Czech Republic)
Junior Large Mikhail Shmelev (Russia)

Teams L One Italy (Italy)
Teams S/M Medium 2 (Czech Republic)

EO

In 2016, the EO took place at Parc des Loisirs d’Olhain (France), it was the first time that the EO took place in an amusement parc, thus allowing the more than 800 participants to have a lot of fun beside their runs. We saw excellent runs and even the adults had wonderful communication worldwide and this way transported the aim of Agility and made it still more successful.

The winners were:

Individual

Cat. L Teresa Kralova (Czech Republic)
Cat. M Laura Reinhalter (Austria)
Cat. S Claudia Schwab (Switzerland)

Team

Cat. L Germany Large 1
Cat. S/M Simply The Best (Slovenia)

© U. Bormann

WAC

In 2016, there was a special World Championship, with about 400 entries from 42 different national canine organisations, for the first time in Zaragoza (Spain) in a wonderful venue, far away from Madrid where most of the Spanish Agility clubs are. It was the first time ever, that the executive board of the Spanish canine organisation accompanied the WAC from the beginning to the end, and the last three days Carla Molinari, member of the FCI General Committee did the same. That was a great appreciation for the athletes.

All over this special World Championship, all the volunteers were kindly and friendly, helping whenever they were asked to. We had a special veterinarian team, who stood there during the whole event and I think they all became Agility enthusiasts.

The winners were:

Individual

Cat. L Anne Lenz (Germany)
Cat. M Martina Magnoli Klimasova (Czech Republic)
Cat. S Tobias Wüst (Germany)

Team

Cat. L Russia
Cat. M Germany
Cat. S Germany

© G. Kuester

So far about our sportive activities.

But we had two real working meetings: one in February in Zaragoza and the other one after the long days of the World Championships - 2 days – Monday and Tuesday with a lot of applications according to the first drafts of rule changes.
Since we had the changes of the rules, the judges guidelines and to add obstacle guidelines on our meeting agenda, and because we think this part is also important for the safety of our dogs, we formed three working groups, elected by the delegates. Their task was to do the final work for the next meeting, so that all drafts were overviewed and changed according to the decisions we made in the meetings. All three groups did an excellent job and all countries do have the drafts, so all can be well prepared for the next meeting. I would like to thank all of them to take their free time to do this “job”.

We had a real good communication with the board members also in between the meetings, so everyone is well informed. I would like to thank the FCI General Committee for answering our questions and the FCI General Secretariat for their cooperation.
We can be proud to say, that our international events for the next years have hosts and I am sure these events will be wonderful and will have a lot of spectators.

Christa Bremer
President of the FCI Agility Commission