My Dear Presidents and Secretary Generals of ASAF MNA’s:

Let me begin by extending warm greetings and best wishes to you for a year full of peace, prosperity and happiness.

Asia is a vast and multi-faceted continent of 4.3 billion people, and our strength lies in its diversity. The multiplicity in culture, faith and language is what makes Asia special. 

The year that has just gone by was a year of mixed fortunes. It began on a very promising note with the largest number of Asian sailors qualifying for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. 42 sailors representing 08 MNA’s at the Olympic Games Sailing is a pointer to the fact that our strategy to promote Olympic sailing in Asia is on solid grounds.

In 2014 – 15 we launched our very own ASAF Cups for Olympic and Youth Classes, and in the last year we have added ASAF Keelboat Cup to our line of events in Asia. Increased participation levels at these events in the coming years are expected to improve our sailor’s standings and result in faster development of the sport across Asia.

During this four year cycle culminating with 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, there will be many more ASAF organised events. The dates for major events in 2017 and 2018 have already been announced.

Our interactions at the ASAF Annual Conferences during the past two years have identified several areas that need a rapid change. These are lack of qualified domestic coaches, limited WS accredited Race officials and very high costs of Olympic equipment which have been a detriment to the growth of sport in our continent. To overcome these challenge the Executive Committee has been working on various strategies and should receive your focused attention.

Commencing 2017, the ASAF will organise an Annual Training and Development Seminar. I am aware of the good work being done by many of our MNA’s in some of these areas, and further interaction amongst our MNA’s can help spread best practices and help leverage knowledge and experience to the benefit of all.

Another area that we shall actively pursue this year at the ASAF Annual Conference will be restricting private or team support boat use for minimizing environment impact, reducing cost and providing a level play field for all sailors.  I am very hopeful that this initiative shall be supported by all our MNA’s and we shall then lay the roadmap for its implementation across events in Asia.

Finally, in order to minimize the prohibitive costs of equipment as well as mitigating transportation expenses, we have been busy consulting equipment manufacturers and suppliers across the world. I am happy to share with you that preliminary discussions with equipment manufacturers and suppliers in our region have been very encouraging and we hope to finalise the arrangements in the very near future. 

Before I conclude, I express my deep appreciation to you all. I do look forward to our extended interface in the forthcoming ASAF Annual Conference in May 2017, when we will have the time to hear each one of us in detail.

Thank you.