TOKYO, Oct. 19, 2016 – Five USA Gymnastics members were elected to serve in leadership positions with the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) at the recent 81st FIG Congress in Tokyo, Japan. Ron Galimore of Indianapolis, USA Gymnastics’ chief operating officer and 1980 Olympian, was elected as a member of the Executive Committee. Steve Butcher of Knoxville, Tenn., who ran unopposed, will serve his second straight term as president of the Men’s Gymnastics Technical Committee. Caroline Hunt of Indianapolis, who heads up rhythmic gymnastics for USA Gymnastics, was reelected to the Rhythmic Technical Committee. Dmitri Poliaroush of Lafayette, La., was re-elected to the Trampoline/Tumbling Technical Committee and was named the committee’s second vice president. Ron Froehlich of Birmingham, Ala., was chosen for another term as an auditor.
Japan’s Morinari Watanabe was elected president of the FIG, succeeding Bruno Grandi. The vice presidents are Luo Chaoyi of China, Nellie Kim of Belarus and Vasily Titov of Russia. The other discipline technical committee presidents are: Donatella Sacchi of Italy, women’s gymnastics; Nataliya Kuzmina of Russia, rhythmic gymnastics (reelected); Horst Kunze of Germany, trampoline/tumbling (reelected); Sergio Garcia Alcazar of Spain, aerobic gymnastics; Rosy Taeymans of Belgium, acrobatic gymnastics (re-elected); and Margaret Sikkens Ahlquist of Sweden, Gymnastics for All.