Wrapping up 2024 – Looking forward to 2025

Dear friends of Wheel Gymnastics,

What a year! As 2024 has come to a close, I would like to share some reflections with you all. The 2024 Wheel Gymnastics World Championships were of course the highlight for us as a community, but let’s take it step by step:

• At the end of March, Belgium hosted the first IRV Certified Competition of the year – the International Belgian Open – with over 50 participants from 8 different countries.
• Also during the first few months of the year, the IRV offered a series of IRV Judging Exams and an IRV Judging Multiplier Course to help get new judges for the international events and provide an opportunity for them to maintain their expertise.
• Next up was the 2024 World Championships in Almere (Netherlands) with participating gymnasts representing 13 countries. Once again, I would like to express my enormous gratitude to the Dutch Organising Committee for stepping in and taking on the task of hosting these championships. The team managed to pull together a fantastic event in an unusually short space of time to organise and prepare it all. This year’s World Championships stood out for me, amongst other things, in the variety of national anthems we heard as gold medals were won by gymnastics representing 7 different nationalities, a diversity I cannot recall having seen in our sport before. (For those who missed it, the gold medal-winning countries were Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland). For me personally, the World Championships also marked the start of a great and ongoing adventure with my new role here at the IRV and I want to take this opportunity to thank Henning once again for all the work he did in his nine years as IRV President before handing the baton on to me. Already during my first week, I got to see a different perspective from my usual gymnast’s one, witnessing the activity and hard work of the IRV team behind the scenes working hard for a great event – hand in hand with the organisers, volunteers, and everyone else present at the event.
• During the course of the autumn, two more IRV Certified Competitions took place. The Danish Open saw 35 gymnasts from across Europe make their way to Sonderburg, while the 13th Austrian Open brought once more a large number of participants to Salzburg. Both events have become popular and established fixtures in the international calendar of wheel gymnastics events.
• On the administrative side, the first half of the year was all about preparing for the World Championships and accompanying General Assembly. In the context of the General Assembly, our member countries elected a new president, a new vice president and reelected two vice presidents. Besides the warm welcome I received in my new role as president (thank you), Achus Emeis also joined the Executive Board as a vice president representing France as a new IRV member (welcome to Achus). Maria Sollohub and Sabine Krumm were re-elected as vice presidents, while Günter Fischer is half-way through his current term of office.
• In September, the IRV Annual Meeting was held in Hamburg and we were able to reflect in detail on the World Championships to evaluate what went well and what can be improved in the future. We also had various in-depth discussions on many aspects of our sport and the federation as a whole. Two new volunteers were also welcomed to the team: Max Brinkmann and Kristina Krohn will work in the Judging and Competition teams respectively.
• We all returned with full task lists that are keeping us busy. Some things have already been completed, such as an elaborate community survey, the results of which were the basis to the decision to award Germany the 2026 Wheel Gymnastics World Championships (to be held in Göttingen from 29 June – 5 July 2026).
• Many other tasks are being worked on and we are looking forward to sharing them with you as soon as they are ready. At this point, I would like to take the opportunity to thank and congratulate the entire IRV team of volunteers for the great job they do – thank you all very much!
• One of the eagerly awaited work packages is the new gym wheel Code of Points update. This work is progressing well and a “Stage 1” update will be released in the next few weeks. Progress on a “Stage 2” update will speed up after publication of the new difficulty catalogue for the straight-line discipline. The Code of Points team is making every effort to stick to the planned timeline despite losing a very valuable team member after Alexander Müller decided to step down from his role earlier this autumn – a big thank you for all your work, Alex!
• Last but not least, after three years as IRV General Secretary, Cheyenne Rechsteiner will be transferring her volunteer efforts to other IRV activities from early 2025. She has been a great support for the IRV in her role as General Secretary and luckily for us, she will stay involved in more topical activities – thank you Cheyenne!

On that note, we are still looking for someone to join us as our new General Secretary. If you read this far in this already longer than expected message, I assume you are passionate about wheel gymnastics, which means you already fulfil the most important requirement for the post, we’d love to hear from you! See our post on this for more information: Are you the IRV’s next General Secretary?

Looking forward to 2025
In the year to come, we look forward to a range of exciting events and activities, with the Gym Wheel Team World Championships in Leipzig and Cyr Training Camp in Greece as definite highlights. 2025 also marks the 100-year anniversary of the “Rhönrad” patent and the 30-year anniversary of the IRV, both of which are causes for celebration. Our efforts to spread knowledge about wheel gymnastics and make it accessible around the world will continue with increased interaction with the wider wheel gymnastics community. This all starts with close collaboration between the IRV Administration and its extended team of volunteers, the Athletes’ Commission, our member countries, and all of you who are reading this as individual friends of our sport.

With that, all that is left for me now is to wish you a great start into the New Year – let’s keep the wheels rolling and fill them and our lives with joy and happiness!

Kind regards,

Matthias