The IKF announced the members of the IKF Olympic Format Taskforce. This taskforce is responsible to lead the project aimed at helping IKF to determine which of the new Korfball formats, with a smaller number of players compared to traditional Korfball8, has the largest chance of broad appeal among athletes, fans, National and Regional Federations and sponsors with the ultimate goal of appealing to the IOC for a possible inclusion on the Olympic program. The members of the Taskforce are Gabi Kool, Jorge Rodrigues e Sousa, Samiha Dabholkar, Jens van Poucke, Ya-Wen Lin, Marjan de Jong, Williard Johnson and our very own Geert Hendriks.
The project has been initiated in Q1 2022 and is expected to be completed by Q3 2023 after which the promotion towards the IOC will be initiated as part of a more holistic Olympic inclusion strategy. Key milestones are the creation of a research framework, including the competitive landscape of other sports and mapping out possible appeal among all stakeholders; field research among all identified stakeholders including possible competition formats, playing formats and the creation of a scaling framework. This will be followed by a presentation to IKF of the report and recommendation to support IKF’s Executive Committee in their decision making. Following that decision during the World Korfball Congress in 2023 at the World Championship in Chinese Taipei, IKF will then start the roll out, scaling activities and active promotion of its chosen format towards IOC as well as the World Games. More information about the members and a reaction of Gabi Kool, chair of the Taskforce, can be found here.