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| Foreword | No.64 June 2013 |

President`s Message
Margaret Talbot

The main focus of this first ICSSPE Bulletin of 2013, Sports Law, is timely. Many national and international sport organisations are expressing concern about how they can manage the complex demands of good governance and protect the integrity of their sport, in a context of increasing challenges and pressures stemming from commercialism, intensification of competition at elite levels, athletes’ rights and the betting industry, both regulated and unregulated.

Sport administrators, as ever, need to be clear about their core values and the ways these are expressed in organisations’ constitutions, statutes and bye-laws, as well as in the cultures of their organisations. Sport no longer can claim that it is “value free”; or that its values are sacrosanct. Neither can its leaders afford to ignore the increasing use of the law in sport governance, whether driven by those responsible for the sport, or by participants and competitors, or by activists promoting the interests of particular groups. The costs of litigation, especially when organisations are ill-prepared, can be enormous, both financial, and in terms of the time of senior officers, whose attention may shift away from the core purposes of the sport’s administration and governance, towards addressing and preparing for legal cases and challenges.

ICSSPE is grateful for the ongoing support of the editors of this Bulletin, both in collecting contributions, and in providing legal advice to the Council for its own affairs. There has been genuine synthesis of knowledge, theory and practice.

The dynamic development of the applications of law, in and by sport, has been well documented by Hazel Hartley, in the new edition of the ICSSPE Directory of Sport Science, which is available to ICSSPE members online through the membership section.

2013 has already been an eventful and demanding year for ICSSPE, with its partnership with Nike and the American College of Sports Medicine in the report “Designed To Move”; and with other partnerships and collaborations which represent a growing awareness of the role of physical activity in public health (outlined briefly in this Bulletin). Add to this, the challenges of ICSSPE’s role in partnering with the German Federal Ministry and UNESCO to manage the Conference of Ministers and Senior Officials (MINEPS V), which took at the end of May in Berlin. It has been a real privilege to participate in the pre-MINEPS debates around the three themes, since ICSSPE members have provided an unprecedented amount and range of quality input to the Conference development and documents. It is hoped that this level of ICSSPE member participation will continue, as the implementation of MINEPS recommendations begins to be monitored.

It is appropriate at the end of this short message, to record ICSSPE’s support and sympathy for the organisers, participants and their families of the Boston Marathon. While the shock of this tragedy was intense, the courage and resilience of the injured and bereaved, as well as the world-wide solidarity of sportspeople across the world, have celebrated the human spirit through determination not to be deprived of the joys and triumphs of sport – as seen, only a week later, in the London Marathon. Such events, of course, demonstrate the vulnerable nature of major sporting festivals and contests – but the reactions to abuse also exemplify the global citizenship that is so valued by international sporting communities. Long may it thrive!

Professor Margaret Talbot, PhD OBE FRSA
President

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