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The August 2001 issue of Air Sports International was planned to be a post World Air Games issue; one in which we would have reverted to our regular format of reporting on the events held worldwide. Unfortunately that has not been entirely possible. We still had a lot of information from the WAG that we would like to share with our readers and also not much else has happened after the 'hang over' of this major event. I would not like to stand on judgement on the media effectiveness of the WAG as I am certain the FAI Board of Director would no doubt look into this matter in some depth, but I feel duty bound to mention here that one of the very important aims of having the WAG was to get media exposure to our events; have we acheived that ? I suspect that media organisers and planners for the WAG have kept their visions rather limited. They have not thought globally. I am not being critical but there are other models for us to see. Unfortunately, lack of media awareness has been a FAI problem for many many years. We enjoy conducting and participating in our sports but almost always forget to tell others about it. Public Relations for an event like the WAG must get the same, if not higher, priority than the organisation of the event itself in terms of lead time and long term planning. It is necessary to first publicise the Games and thus draw public attention which will in turn lead to sponsors and eventually funds to successfully run the Games. PR is not a day to day reporting of the events and claimimg a couple of sound bytes on TV or column centimetres in some papers, mostly local. The process must start many years before the event and should be designed to build up a hype leading upto a cresendo thus giving every sponsor his money's worth. We have since had two Games and have learn't lessons from both of them. We need to plan for the 3rd WAG now and start the PR build-up right from now. To get back to the August issue. We have a very interesting human interest story this month. The story is of how two siblings got together after years of separation thanks to parachuting. This is a must read story. Happy Reading !
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