GENEVA, June 13 — Kim Jae-youl was reelected as the president of the International Skating Union (ISU) at the 60th ISU Congress in Tenerife, Spain, on Friday, and saying the “BEIJING28” event will be the catalyst for future editions in every Olympic cycle.
Kim confirmed the reelection at an online news conference after the three-day Congress. He said after being reelected, “I thank you for your support and your trust. I assure you that I am as committed today as I was in 2022 to lead this organization and help build a bright future for our sport.” The Congress also made many other elections, including the elections of new figure skating vice president Gyorgy Elek, speed skating vice president Alexander Kibalko, ISU council members for figure skating and speed skating, as well as chairs of the technical committee for ice dance, for synchronized skating and for speed skating, etc. Talking about the new event of “BEIJING28”, which will bring together four ISU World Championships (figure skating, speed skating, short track and synchronized skating) and the ISU Skating Awards in a single city for the first time, Kim said, “It’s really going to be a catalyst for learning in future editions. We see this as being much bigger than simply four World Championships happening at the same time. It’s an opportunity to promote and expose all our sports on the world platform together over quite a condensed period.”
ISU’s plan is to organize the event once every four years between the Winter Olympics. “It’s a proposal that came in 2016 and everybody at the Congress thought this is a brilliant idea, but we haven’t been able to make it alive until the recent agreement with Beijing. To deliver our championships in 2028, we are extremely excited,” Kim added. The ISU Congress also approved a landmark increase in prize money for athletes, up from 5.4 million U.S. dollars in the 2025-26 season to 11.1 million in 2026-27, before reaching 12 million in 2027-28. In parallel, travel contributions provided to ISU members will increase from 2.4 million to 4.5 million. Kim said, “We are very fortunate, thanks to our predecessors, that we have managed our efforts successfully and generated a lot of investment income.”
According to the investment strategy report at the Congress, the investment to ISU was 270 million U.S. dollars in September 2024 and the portfolio has grown to 345 million in April 2026 since the partnership with Cambridge Associates in 2024. “This is just the beginning,” Kim said. “If we continue to make this successful, we will be able to increase the price money to wider people.”
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