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Army Winter Sports 2021 Update

By 25 June 2020August 27th, 2020No Comments

You will be aware that OSVs, which includes Winter Sports Exercises, are currently suspended until 30 Sep 2020, as part of the Army’s overall analysis of discretionary overseas travel. You should also be aware that over the last few days the Land Overseas Centre (LOC) have been discussing whether to extend the current suspension of OSVs out to 31 Dec 2020 and in the case of Winter Sports out to 31 Mar 2021. LOC have decided to hold a further Decision Point (DP) on 1 Sep 2020 to decide on any further extension. This is based on their analysis that to cancel activity now, based on current social distancing direction, and find out in time that these activities could have continued would be more detrimental than deciding to continue with the activity and risk losing money if the Winter Sports Activity is subsequently cancelled.

Therefore event organisers should if they have yet to do so, start the planning process for their events, but with the following caveats:

1. The 2020/21 AEWAI DIN is sat with the publishers and should be released shortly.

2. Authority requests may be submitted to the Sec AWSA for the issue of an authority letter to enable military procedures to be initiated.

3. Event organisers are to actively engage with respective resorts to ascertain the measures intended to be imposed in accordance with host nation COVID guidelines.

4. You are advised that under NO circumstances are public funds to be paid until clear direction has been received from LOC (1 Sep 2020)

5. Event Organisers should be aware that a further suspension out to 31 Dec 2020 will result in a number of events having to be rescheduled or cancelled.

6. The Army qualifying exercises Exs SPARTAN HIKE and PIPEDOWN are due to commence on 9 Jan 21, therefore there will be insufficient time for novices to comply with the Alpine Directive that ‘novices must complete 2-weeks on snow training’ before they are eligible to complete in Army qualifying championships. This will result in no novices racing at Army Alpine events.

7. Event organisers are to engage with the respective Discipline Committees to ascertain any further regulations for their specific events before commencing in the administrative process.