IMBRA World Championship 2022 - A true success!
The 2 weeks in Poland provided a long-awaited comeback after the Covid break, including great racing, a newly elected IMBRA committee and announcements for the next World Championships.
FSR Polska and the town of Konopiska did a splendid job to organize a great World Championships. As always with big events, the key for success was the attention to details. The Konopiska event had it all: a dedicated, professional and always friendly organizing team, YouTube live stream, many onsite displays for results, lap counting with new automatic features (e.g. blue flag indication), free water provided at the preparation area, onsite lunch option, bar, breakfast shop for campers, comfortable shower and toilet facilities and a generally great venue. iMBRA thanks again to the organizers and the venue for this great job!
Continuing the list of acknowledgements, iMBRA would like to thanks outgoing committee members Lauren Morrison, Jan Wegeberg Smidt and Vladislav Krasovsky for their work. Lauren also received a nice package of farewell gifts from the president and the members countries.
The iMBRA general meeting on 7 August elected 4 new members for the iMBRA committee, now consisting of:
President: Ian Folkson (Slovenia)
Vice President: Andras Berta (Hungary)
Committee Member: Sunniva Løwdal Sunde (Norway)
Committee Member: Adrian Tworuszka (Poland)
Committee Member: Andrea Cavalli (Italy)
Committee Member: Christian Hof (Germany)
Committee Member: Valentinas Pumputis (Lithuania)
Junior Representative: Arturs Teteris (Latvia)
Other decisions made at the members meeting:
iMBRA plans to hold split World Championships for the Hydro/Offshore and the Endurance classes in the future. The reason for this decision is the fact that 2-week events are simply too long both for organizers and participants, so we hope to see more potential countries hosting events (now easier to organize) and also more racers at these events (staying away from job and family for only 5-6 days, instead of a full 2 weeks).
Hydro/Offshore World Championships will be organized in odd years, Endurance World Championships in even years. As this gives a new yearly rhythm of championships, iMBRA will discontinue organizing European Championships. The next World Championships are planned as follows:
2023 iMBRA Hydro/Offshore World Championship – Provisionally Italy
2024 iMBRA Endurance World Championship - Hungary
The member countries agreed that iMBRA needs to run 2 petrol classes, however there are serious doubts about the 35cc class, now full of 28-29cc boats duplicating the 27cc class, while ‘real’ 35 Endurance boats are generally regarded as too big, too fast and simply unsafe. The general meeting decided to keep the 35cc Endurance class for at least 1 more championship, but also asked the Committee to talk to manufacturers and look into the possibility of introducing a smaller petrol class instead of the 35cc in the future. We will keep you posted.
Regarding junior classes, the general meeting decided to try and create an ‘under 13 year-old’ classification within the 3.5 junior classes at the World Championships, where the number of entries make it sensible. These young racers will keep on participating in the junior class, also having the chance to score results and even win the overall junior class, so the “under 13” classification is basically a special price within juniors, taken from final results.
The committee aims to further clarify age limitations, as follows:
- juniors are those racers who haven’t had their 19th birthday until the end of the championships
- under 13s are those racers who haven’t had their 13th birthday until the end of the championships
Another junior-related decision: in case an international event (typically IMBRA league race) decides not to run separate qualifying heats for juniors (mixing them with seniors), the juniors that qualify for the senior final will have the chance to take part in the senior final (even if there is a separate junior final organized for them). So basically, a fast junior can run in both finals in these rare cases when qualification is mixed, but finals are separated.
Once again thanks FSR Polska for a great event, thank you for all the organizers and participants, thanks outgoing committee members and welcome new ones!
Ljubljana, Budapest, 15 August 2022
Ian and Andras
on behalf of the iMBRA Committee
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Photos from Poland: