The Pan American Gymnastics Union (PAGU / UPAG) Explained

What the union is

The FIG groups its member federations into continental unions; the Pan American union covers North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The FIG's published milestones date its founding to 1971, in Cali, Colombia — the city that hosted the Pan American Games that year. It is an autonomous body that speaks for gymnastics in the Americas and its member federations within the FIG, and it describes itself as working with the national federations, the FIG and Panam Sports, the body behind the Pan American Games.

Members and regions

The union's website counts 33 affiliated national federations and divides the Americas into five regions. The regions are more than geography: each has its own vice-president on the executive committee, and the technical committees have drawn their members region by region.

The directory of federations also lists Antigua and Barbuda and Haiti, which the regional list does not place. Note that Trinidad and Tobago and Aruba belong to northern South America in the union's scheme, not to the Caribbean.

What it does

• Championships. Senior and junior Pan American Championships in artistic, rhythmic, trampoline and tumbling, aerobic and acrobatic gymnastics.
• Qualification. Turning championship results into places at the Pan American Games, as in the four lists of September 2014 behind Toronto 2015 gymnastics qualification.
• Technical committees. Committees for the disciplines draw up entry rules and allocate places; the president of the women's artistic committee signed the 2014 women's list.
• Judges and development. Courses, development camps and FIG academies in the region, which the union's old site used to announce.
• Disciplines. Men's and women's artistic, rhythmic, trampoline and tumbling, acrobatic and aerobic gymnastics, plus parkour and gymnastics for all — the FIG's disciplines, as listed on the union's own site.

Among the objectives the union lists for itself: organising and supervising competitions in all its disciplines; holding meetings and conferences where members, gymnasts, coaches, judges and officials exchange information; discussing the agenda of the FIG Congress with its members to reach common positions; keeping the region's representatives in FIG posts informed of its members' shared interests; and publishing information and technical bulletins.

How it is run

The executive committee has a president, a secretary general, a treasurer and a vice-president for each of the five regions. Today the presidents of the technical committees, the president of the athletes' commission and two auditors are listed alongside them. The union's 2011–2015 site had the same core of officers and 7 technical committees; parkour, now a committee of its own, was not among them.

Officers are elected by the union's congress for four-year terms. The call to the 2011 congress, sent from Caracas in April 2011 — the union's office was then at the Venezuelan Olympic Committee — asked member federations to nominate candidates for president and for the presidencies of the technical committees by 19 July, and to send proposals, in English or Spanish, by the same date. It scheduled meetings of the executive and technical committees for 18 October 2011 and the assembly, with elections for 2011–2015, for the next day. In 2015 the union posted the list for its 2015–2019 elections.

The union's old site on this domain

From about 2011 until the mid-2010s the union's website ran here, at upag-gymnastics.com, in English under /en/ and Spanish under /es/. Its archived pages show what it carried: the statutes, the 2011 congress, the 2015–2019 elections, the officers and committees for 2011–2015, codes of points and technical regulations, competition calls and programmes, results, and notices of camps and academies. Wikipedia still cites several of its documents, which is why their addresses now lead to this guide.

One item shows the union's reach at the time: after the 2013 World Championships in Antwerp, a letter to the federations' presidents congratulated the gymnasts of the 14 Pan American nations that had competed there — Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States and Venezuela.