Officials from IBSA flagship sports of Football, Goalball and Judo were invited to spend a day with the IPC management team in Bonn this week, accompanied by Neil O’Donovan.

The day was hosted by Jürgen Padberg (Paralympic Games Sport Manager) wth the aim of providing an opportunity for the IBSA sports teams to engage closely with senior IPC staff throughout the day. Football (represented by Ulrich Pfisterer and Alex Fangmann), Goalball (Kari Marklund and Kari Räsänen) and Judo (Norbert Biro and Janos Tardos) met key officials from IPC, including Xavi Gonzalez (Chief Executive Officer); Peter van de Vliet (Medical & Scientific Director) Georg Schlachtenberger (Chief Operating Officer), as well as Craig Spence (Communications Director) and Jose Dominguez (Broadcasting).   
 
Warmly welcomed by IPC staff, the day commenced with an opening plenary session, including an update on Rio 2016 preparations as well as the upcoming IPC Strategic Gathering in Berlin.

Each sport then held individual meetings with key IPC staff. Amongst the other topics discussed were the application process for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic sport programme, Agitos Foundation funding, classification development issues and much more.

All in all, it was considered a most useful exercise of equal benefit to IBSA and IPC.