From the President

Bon jour! I am writing this in Montreal, Canada. We have an exhibition booth at World Federation of the Deaf Congress.

Prior to arriving in Montreal, my wife and I traveled to Portschach, Austria to attend the Dresse and Maere Team Tennis Cup. We were treated very well by the warm hospitality of the city and the Austrian Deaf Sports Federation. I would like to congratulate the Austrian Deaf Sports federation for coordinating a great event. Competition results are available in this issue.

Then I flew to Montreal for the Deaflympics Management Team meeting for two days, hosted by the Canadian Deaf Sports Association (CDSA) at the Olympic Park. It was the site of the 1976 Olympics. With much delight, we also had the opportunity to visit CDSA’s office at the Olympic Park and were truly impressed with full service facilities (post office, travel agency, printing shop, legal services, to name a few) that are provided for office tenants under one roof. Of course, this makes us feel more envious than ever. We extended sincere thanks to CDSA for their wonderful hospitality with free accommodation and meals. I will have a brief report of the Management Team meeting in the next issue. Most of our time was spent on issues relating to Melbourne 2005 Deaflympic Games and we hope for a great event in Melbourne with lots of spectators. And we have a new logo for DEAFLYMPICS. Separate information on the logo design appears in this issue.

Ole Artmann and I attended as representatives of Deaflympics at the General Assembly of World Federation of the Deaf for 2 days, while Donalda Ammons and Tiffany Granfors worked on setting up the exhibition booth. During the Congress, we met lots of people from different countries who are not yet members of Deaflympics, like Madagascar, Guatemala, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Gulf States. Now we must get advantage of our contacts to increase our membership base. We aim to have an increased number of applications for membership by the time we convene for the DEAFLYMPICS Congress in Melbourne.

Lastly, for the next 15 months we are in for an exciting ride!
By John Lovett