The Fadura Sports Park, in Getxo, will host the September 15 to 19, 2021 of the Sokatira World Championship in the gravel modality, An appointment that will bring together 1,500 athletes from 30 nations and four continents and should have started this Wednesday but was postponed due to the pandemic. The Biscayan town will host the club competition for the first two days and the national team competition on Saturday and Sunday.
The sporting event has been presented at the Basque Museum-Euskal Museoa in Bilbao, in an event that was attended by the Minister of Culture and Language Policy and spokesman for the Basque Government, Bingen Zupiria; the Basque provincial deputy for Euskara, Culture and Sports, Lorea Bilbao; the mayor of Getxo, Amaia Agirre, and Galder Gobantes, the Basque Country representative in the International Federation of Sokatira (TWIF) and on behalf of the Organizing Committee of the World Cup.
As they recalled during the presentation, the World Cup was scheduled to start this September 16 but the situation caused by the covid-19 pandemic forced in March to announce its postponement.
The local organization of the Getxo Sokatira World Cup falls to three entities that have been promoting sokatira in Euskadi for years: the Euskadi Federations of Basque Games and Sports, that of Bizkaia and the Getxo Herri Kirol Taldea, that count for this celebration, with the support of the Basque Government, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia and the Getxo City Council.
Basque Country has been a full member of the Sokatira International Federation (TWIF) since 2015. As the institutional leaders and the Basque Country representative have pointed out, at this meeting in Getxo there are three important circumstances for this sport.
On the one hand, the TWIF International Federation celebrates its 60th Anniversary in 2020 and, due to the postponement to 2021, its objective is to celebrate the anniversary during the Getxo Championship, since the pandemic has put all its activities on hold. On the other hand, the interest of athletes to participate, given that the first classified in the different categories will obtain the pass for the World Games in Birmingham, Alabama (USA), in 2022.
And finally, at the beginning of next year a new anti-dopping regulations for this sport, which tightens control measures. In the face of the Championship, the Basque Government will help to implement this entire protocol.
Modalities
The Sokatira World Championship is internationally called ‘Tug of War’ and Participating in the event are international associations adhered to the International Federation (TWIF) and clubs from those countries. The competitions will take place in different categories, according to modalities and weights, among which there are also sections by gender and mixed.
The competitive aspect of the World Cup is structured in two parts: the first two days of the championship a tournament is held between clubs adhered to TWIF, coming from the 72 countries that comprise it; while the last two days the national team competition takes place. After the World Championship in the rubber modality, which was held in February in Letterkeny (Ireland), the one in Getxo is the next great event in this sport for 2021. It is the largest competition in terms of size and scope .
The event is held biannually and in previous editions some of the venues have been Cape Town, South Africa, in 2018; Malmo, Sweden, in 2016; or Madison, USA, in 2014. The Biscayan town prevailed in the final vote in 2015 for candidates from Switzerland and the Netherlands, receiving 15 of the 19 votes cast by the International Federation of this sporting discipline.
The one in charge of convening the World Cup is the Tug of War International Federation, which in its Malmo 2015 Congress designated Getxo’s candidacy for the organization of the World Cup. The TWIF was formed in 1960 and is made up of 72 national federations from the 5 continents and this year celebrated its 60th anniversary. Therefore, this year of the championship in Getxo, it celebrates its 60th anniversary and since 2002 it is a Federation recognized by the IOC.
In the presentation that took place this morning in Bilbao, several of the materials and resources with which the communication and dissemination of the event began were presented. The participants in the press conference, among which were representatives of the Basque sokatira teams from the Getxo, Goiherri, Gaztedi and Mutriku clubs, have released the image of the event, the World Championship logo and the first of the spots that will be used to broadcast the event.
The logo of the World Championship takes the title ‘Sokatira Mundiala’ as its great claim, thus making reference to the name of the sport in Basque, as a way to demonstrate the identity and roots that this sport has had in our land. Graphically it is clean and simple, but innovative. Play with the concept of the soka (rope) as a connecting element.
The imagotype presents a star as a graphic image, which symbolizes the competition and takes the shape and texture of a rope. A rope that has been wanted to be colorful, taking as colors red, green, blue, brown and black. The red, green, black and blue reminiscent of the Olympic rings, and the brown, as a reference to the color of the rope.
The tagline that accompanies the logo to complete the logo presents the Sokatira Mundiala concept and the subtitle Basque Country Tug Of War World Championships. This image will serve as an identity for the communication and dissemination actions that will be developed from now on.
As they recalled in the presentation, the Basque Basque Country team was admitted in 2014 as a full member of the International Federation and, therefore, can participate in international competitions, under the name Basque Country. At the last World Championships in 2018, held in Cape Town, the Basque Country delegation achieved “great success” and obtained a total of seven medals.
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