POLICY STATEMENT – RANKINGS, SELECTIONS & THE IMPACT OF COVID

Due to the uncertainty around the international calendar and the challenges involved domestically in sourcing venues and identifying weekends for domestic competition, any defined notice periods/timescales for information from BF eg in relation to calendar, ranking events are to be interpreted as statements of intent where practically possible.

A number of our policies and schemes in relation to ranking and selection set out statements which relate to our intention to provide information within a timeframe or notice period – such as lists of nominated events, dates of events, multipliers for competitions. With uncertainty over international and domestic calendars and travel this is not always practically possible.

All reasonable efforts will still be made to provide advance information within the timescales laid out in the policies, but BF’s failure to meet stated timescales due to factors outside of BFs control will not be grounds for a selection appeal.

For example:

“The calendar of Nominated Competitions together with indicative multipliers (c.f. 4.4) is published on the BF website no later than 10 working days before the first Nominated Competition” (Ranking Scheme document)

We are currently unable to provide certainty on the cadet international season as the international calendar is not confirmed. In addition to this we expect that we will need to take reactive decisions throughout the season in light of:

• Further international competition cancellations/postponements
• The red/amber/green status of a country (we cannot for example nominate a competition being held in a ‘red’ status country)
• The advised security situation of a country (independent of COVID, is a the security risk sufficiently low for us to wish to send a squad of athletes)

We have chosen to issue this statement to cover all policies, rather than reviewing and updating every BF policy, to allow us to focus our limited resources on supporting the restart of club and competitive fencing.

If you have any further questions about this post, please submit them to us via the form here and a member of the ADP team will come back to you.

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