IBU improves significantly in Winter Sports Governance report

The IBU’s comprehensive governance reforms have been recognised in the fourth AIOWF Report, into the Governance of Winter Sports conducted by iTrustSport, as the federation moved up from Group B into Group A2 (scale D-A) with an overall score increase of more than 30%.

The IBU was commended by iTrustSport for its significant improvement and finished above the mean score for the seven winter International Federations. The IBU received close to the maximum score in the Transparency section, reflecting the federation’s commitment to being as open as possible. The IBU finished with the highest points in Transparency and Democracy of any of the IFs in the report.

The independent Biathlon Integrity Unit has become fully operational since the last report was conducted in 2020 resulting in a major improvement in biathlon’s integrity score close to the highest recorded. The IBU also performed well on two of the three new indicators for 2021-22: support is provided to enhance the governance of members and implementing a risk management programme.

IBU President Olle Dahlin said:

“We are delighted to see that the governance reforms we have implemented have been reflected with a substantially improved score in this report. We have been on a journey of reform since 2018 however this is the first evaluation where those reforms can be properly analysed as they are now fully in place and bearing fruit.

“We are proud that this report shows that we have become leaders in transparency and democracy among the IFs in the report. But we want to do more and we are committed to further reform to ensure that we are implementing the highest standards possible.”

The report measures governance across 50 indicators covering five principles or sections: Transparency, Integrity, Democracy, Development and Control Mechanisms with a possible total of 200 points. The IBU score increased by 38 points compared to the previous assessment. The average increase of AIOWF Members was 14 points. For more information on the report, please click here.