1st IRV Online Competition exceeded expectations

The global COVID 19 pandemic is affecting millions of sports enthusiasts around the world. New lockdowns have recently been announced by governments in Europe, including wide-ranging restrictions for non-professional sports facilities and club activities – also for wheel gymnasts.

As an international sports federation, we are committed to a healthy and sustainable performance development. We are aware that weeks without training are a challenge for all of you who are aiming to participate at IRV World Championships or other competitions in the future. In these uncertain times, we understand that some of you might be struggling with motivation, a positive perspective and the willingness to become better.

Update: World Championships next year

With regard to the two planned World Championships next year, we are aware that it can be difficult to train for competitions not knowing if the situation will allow us to hold them. As of today, the IRV does not yet know if the Individual World Championships and the Team World Championships will take place. 

One thing we can assure you of is that we will communicate decisions as soon as they are made:

  • at latest end of January 2021 for the Team World Championships (originally planned in Leipzig)
  • at latest end of March 2021 for the Individual World Championships (planned in New Jersey)

You may have heard that the “International German Gymnastics Festival (Internationales Deutsches Turnfest)” in Leipzig next year has been cancelled. Our Team World Championships should have taken place within the framework of the “Turnfest” and we have been in contact with the local organisers to discuss our options. We are also considering how to hold a team competition if not all teams can participate physically on account of travel restrictions, quarantine periods or other limitations.

1st IRV Online Competition exceeded our expectations

For our first IRV Online Competition in October 2020, we received almost 50 videos with routines from gymnasts in Israel, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium and Norway. 

We are extremely happy with the high number of registrations. It has – by far – exceeded our expectations. The feedback we have received has been consistently positive and motivates us to be creative for the future of this new “competition” format.

Our Judging Team has met once already for the first online video conference. It quickly became clear that evaluating routines and taking notes for feedback at the same time is very time consuming and unrealistic for the judging team to achieve in one session. However, we acknowledge the need for gymnasts to get more detailed feedback on their routines and in order to achieve this, we have decided to call upon the expertise of our academy coaches. From now on, you can request feedback from our academy coaches when you register for the Online Competition.

The next online judging meeting is planned for the weekend November 7/8. We are optimistic that we will be able to share the scores and simple feedback with all participants by mid-November. Our Judging Team has been incredibly motivated, evaluated all routines precisely and according to the IRV Code of Points. Thank you for being with us on this new journey!

Next Online Competitions