Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Delegates,

I am happy to welcome you here in Schoonloo for this General Assembly and I take this opportunity to thank Franz Weissher for the organisation of this event. While we are in the woods and in the middle of the nature, which would be very nice for a sport event, some participants found it quite far away from the civilisation and from an international airport…

Let's start working. This year my report will be much more positive than last year as we were extremely successful in our organisations despite another quite poor winter.

We started the season with an excellent first European Championship Kart in Sletten, Denmark. As we expected from our Danish friends, the race was well organised and the trails were very good. Indeed we had a successful organisation and all the controls were done and the results as expected. We also had a good participation from Russia, at least in terms of results with two participants who took two medals. All doping controls were negative and that also is very important. That was also an interesting organisation as it gave us the opportunity to see how this sport was handled in our various Member countries, particularly from the point of view of equipment and rules. Some rules will need improvement and that will come over the years. It was also important to control some too thin dogs and as it is now in our rules to be able to disqualify any dogs below the minimum weight that is in the standard of the breed. Overall, that was a good event even if we might had expected some more teams.

Security on cart races will continue to be a top priority! As we decided last year, with regard to equipment for cart races we will come along with recommendations for the coming four years (as last year we said five years) to try to reach an harmonisation for the equipment in this timeframe. But on such good trails as we had in Denmark it was difficult to have problems.

After this first success for the FISTC in the season, we started again crying because of the lack of snow. By chance we had given the organisation of the European Championship Sprint to Slovakia and to the Donly Club. As usual the Donly Club has been able to organise a perfect race in DONOVALY. It was one of the very few places with enough snow for a perfect organisation. I would like to thank the whole Donly club, for that organisation, and particularly those who have been solving the few problems that arose with hotels and rooms, as it seems now that Donovaly is becoming a very "A la mode" place in Slovakia. Once again we had the honour of the visit of the President of the Slovak Republic who comes each time and shows how important our sport is for the country. The stake-out was perfect as was the trail and the 145 starters enjoyed the race. Despite some complaints before the race about the length of the trails, at the end everybody was happy, sometimes tired but happy.

Donovaly remains one of the best places for our Championships but particularly we know that the organisation will always be a good one and that we have there a perfect team who knows the job and does it perfectly well under the leadership of Pavel Tomas and Miro Dano.

Once again this winter we had problems with the organisation of the Distance Championships. We were all willing to go to Inzell but… the snow was missing there. And we had by that time problems in most countries. Then we started looking for another place and another date for the organisation of our Middles Distance and Long Trail Championships.

I would like to thank very warmly, in name of the FISTC and in the name of all our mushers Walter Treichl and the Raufner Family for having been able to propose THE solution, to organise these Championships in Innerkrems, where we had been already a few years ago. Innerkrems is not Inzell, the profile is different, but they had snow and they have been able to put the necessary efforts to be able to organise it with such a short notice and I really want to thank them very warmly.

Despite some difficult weather conditions, that was an excellent organisation from all the reports I received as I could not personally be present, due to other obligations for me in these dates. I also apologize with some of the mushers who where qualified for Inzell and could not come to Innerkrems because of the different dates, but unfortunately that's life. It was important that we could have our Championships and they have been a success.

Our organising FISTC team was also a reduced one for the same reasons, but we knew that our two persons responsible for the race, Walter Treichl and Olivier Favre would do it in the most perfect way, thanks to their very strong experience.

One remark must be done anyway. We had to refuse a musher that had been disqualified for doping by another international organisation. I just would like to remind you that since 2003 and the meeting we had with Tim White, President of the IFSS, there is a "gentlemen's agreement" between all sled dogs sport federations that when a musher is condemned for doping in one of these federations, the same sanction is applied by all others. We cannot in any way let anybody mistreat a dog by doping it. This being said, let's continue.

Overall, in another poor season with once again no enough snow, the FISTC has been able to organise both its championships on snow as well as the first Cart championship, so we can at least be satisfied for this.

That is it for the sportive aspects of our activity. Now let's talk a little bit about some administrative aspects.

Communication was not as good as in previous years as our Secretary and Webmaster, Jana, who also is one of the FISTC best mushers for Long Trail races had decided to go to Scandinavia to do some very exciting races. She was right to do it as she must do it now that she has the right team to do so, but most of the available information was not on our website and the board is looking for a solution for this problem in future..

We continue to increase our members, and some like the new Romanian club Alaskan Malamutes Balan SA already participated in Donovaly. In addition, there is a new country that is joining the FISTC, it is Luxembourg. Russia and Bulgaria are also knocking at the door and I met them in Donovalyand in the FCI, but they need to structure the sport in their country as, for the moment, it is split in too many small clubs or individuals all around the country. I have one sad announcement to make anyway. Our friends from Monaco have withdrawn their membership. Due to the important health problems of their president, our friend Eros APOLLONI, they were not able to continue to work as a club, but I hope we will be able to meet them soon again on our races and I wish and I think we all wish to Eros Apolloni a much better health as soon as possible and a prompt come back with us.

As I already mentioned in past years, we were in close contact with the FCI. To day I can give you a very positive information. The FCI has recreated a Sled Dogs Commission. This new Commission of the FCI has met on 19 and 20 April in Paris and I have been elected President of this commission. This now opens the way to a formal recognition of our sports by all FCI Member countries. We are working to implement a set of rules to help new countries to develop this sport and now we are recognised also for the dogs. I will give you many more information on this issue later on during the meeting.

Once again, I repeat this is fundamental for the future development of our pure breed sled dogs sports.

Unfortunately, once again I noticed that some mushers do not understand many things to the organisation of sports. They do not understand that when they belong to a Federation they should, they must support it and not try to work against it. They must be proud to be in the FISTC and then they should forget completely the idea of going to race in the other body called wsa. That is purely and totally unacceptable as this has already been said in previous General Assemblies it is no use to repeat it every year.

Before I finish my report as president of the FISTC, I want to take the opportunity to thank very warmly all board members who helped me in my task during the year. They have been very active, efficient and friendly and we have been able to work in a very positive and constructive way. I would like to thank particularly Gert Kronholm who is responsible for Cart races and who has been very active as Board member, Marco Visconti our new responsible for Sprint races, Arno Roos who did a great job as usual, despite a very busy timetable and Guust Zagers who continues to take care of our dogs in a very efficient way. Thanks to our board members and to all the people that have been helping the FISTC in all our Member countries we continue to develop and improve.

All together we have been able to promote our sports and our wonderful and lovely pure breed polar dogs, but we still have a lot to do. We need to continue to work in this positive way and to progress, but the way seems to be opened in the right direction and our future looks bright.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Franco MANNATO