World Athletics Federation to hold 2days Workshop April 14th 15th

World Athletic Federation will be having 2 days workshop on Label Road Races and world Athletics Sustainability Strategy on the April 14^th 2022.

This mean driving the practices and behaviours of individuals and organisations developing the sport. It is also part for the needs of future generation, ensure actions take a balanced approach to their social, economic and environment impact and It will provide a fair and level sporting platform based on sound ethical principles.

According to the head of sustainability and strategy Bob Ramsak, “it is a  primary goal is to give sustainability a more central role in how athletics events are staged by collaborating with the hundreds of event organisers who share this ecosystem with us and do that, we will be embedding sustainability principles into all the events we own, such as our World Athletics Series events, and all the events that we sanction, including the World Athletics Label Road Races.

The SEMS provides best practice guidance for you to incorporate into your event planning and implementation while he ‘Standard’ is a scorecard based upon the guidance from the SEMS that measures an event’s level of achievement in sustainable practices. The Standard will be scalable so that any event at any level, from a local 5K all the way up to a Platinum Label Marathon should be able to achieve the highest standard of sustainable event achievement.

” The Standard will be tiered, and will be applied similarly to the Platinum/Gold/Silver/Bronze labelling system for Label Road Races which will be re-introduced in 2023 (Alessio will share more details on that towards the end of May). We would like to make adherence to the standard mandatory from 2024 for all Label Road Races. This being said, every road race will always be free to choose, among the very many sustainability actions listed in the standard, those more relevant to them, to their communities, partners and stakeholders while others are only beginning to implement your own sustainability policies. This is why we’re having two pilot years (2022 and 2023). Your feedback on the SEMS and Standard will be help us shape the final standard and to define the different levels.

“ It is a way to help new-comers initiate the process, and for us to understand from leading races how to shape this moving forward, we have organised two workshops with Dr. Susie Thomson, our Sustainability Consultant, on 14 April. We will introduce the system, delve into some of the details and answer any questions you may have.

The workshops are scheduled to make it easier across all time zones.

However, the SEMS (44 pgs) and Standard (available in English, French and Spanish) can be downloaded  here. While both will be discussed during the workshops, we recommend that you take a look ahead of time to begin familiarising yourself with the system. If you’re new to sustainability themes, we invite you to complete the FREE, four-part World Athletics e-learning module on sustainability which can found here. The entire course requires about 2hrs and 15min to complete. Upon registration and login, the direct link is here.

“ Finally, we understand that planning is already well underway for your current editions but we still encourage organisers of those events to take part so they can also become familiar with the system as we look towards 2023 and 2024” Bob Ramsak explained..