Participation of the Pan-American Gymanastics Union in the 2011 World Gymnaestrada

Abstract

This paper focuses on the World Gymnaestrada (WG), the largest international Gymnastics for All festival, organized by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG). The aim was to analyze the participation of the National Federation members of the Pan-American Gymnastics Union (PAGU) in the 14th edition of the WG, held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2011. The data collection was made by a semi-structured questionnaire with eight of heads of delegation of the eleven participating American national federation. The results highlight the largest delegations were Brazil, Canada and the USA, respectively, countries which also traditionally participate in this festival. The participants were majority female (74,5%) and the performance were strongly influenced by Artistic and Rhythmic gymnastics disciplines, as well as Dance. PAGU participation has increased in compare with past editions of the WG, ranking it as second in terms of continent with the largest number of participants (6,64%). Although the participation is strongly related to the economic factors, considering all the WG editions held in Europe. We conclude that non-competitive gymnastics still treat secondarily for most PAGU Member Federations, since they are focus on competitive gymnastics disciplines and especially on their national teams.