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On Saturday at its 21st Congress in Madrid, a new President, Secretary General and Executive Board of the International Triathlon Union (ITU) were elected. Marisol Casado of Spain ran unopposed and was officially sworn in as new President, just the second in ITU's history. Canadian Loreen Barnett was uncontested as the new Secretary General, making ITU the only Olympic International Federation to have women as President and Secretary General.

"It is not an envious task to follow in the footsteps of one who has done such an outstanding job over so many years. It is even more difficult to try to step right up and suggest a series of improvements," said Casado in her acceptance speech. "I view my prime challenge as accepting this legacy of unheard-of accomplishments that has been bestowed on me and then hopefully enhancing it even further."

Four Vice-Presidents were also elected including Australian Bill Walker, Antonio Alvarez of Mexico, Kyung-Sun Yu of South Korea, and Sarah Springman, President of the British Triathlon Federation. Tom Carrasco of The Philippines ran unopposed for Treasurer.

ITU's founding President Les McDonald of Canada retires this year and accepted the position of Honourary President, however, only after consulting with ITU's existing Honourary President Gunnar Ericsson of Sweden.

"Juan Antonio Samaranch appointed (Gunnar) to help me put triathlon into the Olympic Games and I made him the Honourary President and so I would not accept this as long as Gunnar Ericsson is there because he was the father I never had," said McDonald.

Ericsson said he wanted to stand together with McDonald as Honourary Presidents for half a year, then Ericsson would step down on his 90th birthday. To that, McDonald responded, "I said okay. Some people in life you like to fight but you don't fight people like Gunnar Ericsson because without him we would not be here."

Another resolution was passed to name Chiharu Igaya of Japan an Honourary ITU Member after stepping down as ITU Vice-President. Igaya, also an IOC Vice-President, is considered incredibly important to triathlon's inclusion onto the Olympic programme.

The election for ITU's Executive Board was so competitive, it required two additional rounds of voting. The new members of Executive Board are (in alphabetical order):

Ria Damgren Nilsson (SWE)
Anatoly Korobov (RUS)
Xin Li (CHN)
Melissa Merson (USA)
Shin Otsuka (JPN)
Mario Rodriguez (GUA)
Terry Sheldrake (NZL)

ITU's new Executive Board will meet less than 24 hours after being elected on Sunday afternoon. Members of ITU's six committees were also elected during the election. The committees were technical, medical, constitution, women's, credentials and Duathlon.

(Source: ITU)