President's Closing Speech

Montreal, Canada - Saturday, 31st August 2002

Tonight I cannot hide my disappointment at the level of participation in these World Championships specially in the Women's field with only 36 teams and 99 pairs and also in the juniors unfortunately.

Thank God you, the champions, were all here, and big names won each event - my congratulations go to you all. However we are missing the masses and it is hard to understand why.

Except of course, as I have said many times, the political and economical environment is not good at the moment.
Still, with 434 Mixed Pairs, 160 Rosenblum Teams, 328 Open Pairs, 31 Senior Teams and 72 Senior Pairs, together with 146 IMP pairs the event was a good size, and the CAN-AM Regional seems to have been a success.

Having said that and considering all the difficulties arising in such a tournament, I am glad to acknowledge that you appreciated Montreal as it deserves, a very nice city with very kind people who I thank warmly on your behalf, especially the Mayor of Montreal, Mr. Gérald Tremblay and Paul Desmarais of the Power Corporation.

I would also like to thank, besides the Canadian and Montreal staff who have already been rewarded by George, the international WBF team of hard workers and organizers coming mainly from France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.S. and many other countries as far as the directors are concerned. Also the logistic support of the ACBL, the Dutch, French and Italian Federations.

Nobody is perfect, myself included, but everyone worked hard for your comfort and benefit.

Let us give a big hand to Mari Retek who was responsible for the ceremonies; our formidable team of Tournament Directors under the leadership of Bill (Kojak) Schoder, Max Bavin, Dimitri Ballas, Antony Ching, Pierre Collaros, Maurizio Di Sacco, Bertrand Gignoux, Richard Grenside, Dietlinde Kellner, Charlie MacCracken, Magdy Shody Mesdary, Rui Marques, John McGregor, Jeanne van den Meiracker, Jean-Louis Pennec, Guillermo Poplawski, Antonio Riccardi, Matt Smith, Vishy Viswanathan and Sol Weinstein. Our Vu-Graph commentators Eric Kokish, Barry Rigal and Sami Kehela and Bobby Wolff, with Elisabeth Antelme, Jean-François Chevalier and Elisabeth Piganeau working behind the scenes and Bernard Delange, Paul Binisti and Bernadette Pasquier on the video. Thanks too to Jean-Paul Meyer the Bulletin Coordinator, Mark Horton, Brent Manley, Brian Senior, George Hadjidakis and Ron Tacchi on the Bulletin with George Georgopoulos and Marco Marin on the Internet; our Press Room under the leadership of Elly Ducheyne; Chris Diment on the Systems Desk and Jan and Corrie Louwerse on the Line Ups; Marc van Beijsterveldt, Eric van Dijk, Harvey Fox and Franz Lejeune for the scoring and results and Franco Crosta, Monica Gorreri, Anna-Maria Orlandi and Nadia Protogène for the duplication. In the Secretariat we had the able services of Carol von Linstow, Christine Francin and Anna Gudge. Particular thanks go to Mark Newton, our IT manager, without whom we would have had no press, bulletin or scoring rooms and to Ton Kooijman who was in charge of operations. Following the success of Salt Lake City, which attracted a lot of press and TV coverage, Bruce Keidan was again responsible for press relations here in Montreal. He was helped by the presence of Bill Gates playing in the World Mixed Pairs Championship and again the press coverage and information spread world wide, bringing Bridge and our Bridge Champions to the front pages.

I would also like to say a special thank you to SNC-Lavalin for the loan of the computers and printers for the World Championships and to Extreme Networks for the loan of the network hubs.

As you probably all know, now in a first step Bridge, as well as chess, has been declared ineligible, according to the Commission, for the Olympic programme. This has still to be officially endorsed by the IOC session in Mexico and Prague.

This was not wholly unexpected.

It is not the end of the world.

Bridge existed before and it will continue to exist.

Hopefully, many more NBOs will be included in their National Olympic Committees and that will make life easier for them.

We will now concentrate on our own developing programme towards schools and on finding suitable venues for our next championships.

This is our duty. We will just have to face the problems as they surface.
We will do our best for you.

José Damiani
WBF President