FIBA - Closing remarks by FIBA President Bob Elphinston

SAO PAOLO (2006 FIBA World Championship for Women) - FIBA is pleased with the 15th edition of the FIBA World Championship for Women and the fourth edition to be held in Brazil.

Especially the performance of the teams gave reason to an optimistic look into the future of women's basketball on a global level.

The playing standard of the16 teams was the best we have witnessed in FIBA history. We are particularly pleased with the growth in women's basketball across the five continents in the world.

Although we witnessed that the top four teams from Russia, Australia, USA and Brazil remained the same as in the previous Olympics and FIBA World Championships, it was clear that the world has become more competitive, and we saw that many teams are now able to compete at the same level, which may lead to some surprising results in Beijing.

We have seen in Brazil some new faces and some emerging new stars. Some of them had their first international appearance at the 2005 FIBA U19 World Championship, which is a further proof for the importance of global events in the youth categories.

An interesting fact was that both at the men's and women's FIBA World Championships in Japan and Brazil the top 8 placed teams were comprised of 6 teams from Europe, 2 teams  form the Americas and one team from Oceania. The absence of Africa and Asia does not necessarily mean that these continents are not competitive at the highest level as was seen in Japan with the brilliant performance of the African teams. It seems, however, that in women's basketball the African continent needs to bridge the biggest gap and needs all our support, because the talent is there, but the structure not yet.

China has demonstrated with the performance in Brazil and with their victories over higher ranked teams like France and Cuba its ability to become a major player at the Beijing Olympic Basketball Tournament for Women.

We are also very pleased with the support we have received during this championship from the players on and off the court, but specifically during the FIBA "Clean Game" campaign which promotes a drug free basketball.

China and the 2006 FIBA World Champion automatically qualify for the 2008 Olympic Games. 10 teams will qualify through the five FIBA Zone Championships in 2007 and the new FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament in June 2008. A press release on the details has been issued yesterday and can be found in the press room.

FIBA will invite bids for the right to host the 2010 FIBA World Championship for Women by the end of this year. A decision will be taken by the Central Board of FIBA in late 2007.

In closing, I would like to thank the media for the outstanding support over the past 2 weeks and wish everybody a safe trip home.