Following on from our last post, wondering what the new ICSD President has planned for the future of the Deaflympics, we have created a link to the SportsMX interview with Valery Rukhledev here.

The video does not have subtitles to give accessibility so this blog will provide a very brief written translation of the new ICSD presidents goals for the future of ICSD and Deaf sport. We must bear in mind that there are many issues that Dr Rukhledev could have spoken about, but he was limited to a video interview.

In his first year he plans to selected the very best possible Technical Directors for each sport, people with extensive experience of their sports in order to improve the organisation of  deaf sports further.

2014 marks the 90th Anniversary of the founding of the Deaflympic Movement and Rukhledev wants to celebrate this with the publication of a book that gives a very detailed history of the Deaflympics from 1924 – 2013.

For the long term, he also wants to base the ICSD office in Switzerland in order that ICSD can increase face to face communications with the IOC. In the past, meetings have been limited because of the costs of making arrangements to travel and timing of meetings due to ICSD offices being elsewhere (USA and UK). Being ‘local’ to the IOC, he hopes that this will increase the visibility of ICSD’s work to the attention of the IOC.

By continuing the dialogue with the IOC, the plan is for the Deaflympics to be supported on a par with the Paralympics.

Overall, Rukhledev wants to see deaf sport improve , become more visible, grow and develop – competitions like the Deaflympics and Deaf world championships to become more elite.

There needs to be more deaf children and young people involved in sport and he plans to approach UN organisations for funding

The underdevelopment of deaf sport in Africa, South America and the Arabic nations needs to be tackled.

Hopefully by the time of the 100th anniversary things will be much improved.

There is an expectation that Russia will be hosting the 2015 Winter Deaflympics but Rukhledev has not yet got supreme government approval for this event. Russian sponsorship of international sports events normally follows an 8-year bidding process and lead-in, and this is not possible for 2015. The venue is within the oil producing territories of Russia and it appears that organisations in the region have pledged their support for the event. Now all that remains is for ICSD to get Russian government approval which he hopes will be forthcoming now that he has a higher profile as the ICSD President. he anticipates making an announcement on the Winter Deaflympics within two months.

Finally, in response to some of the comments following our last blog, Valery Rukhledev has stated on video that he has no ‘russian mafia’ connections.