World championships: what’s the point of voting if you’re going to turn everything upside down?

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It’s a topic that never ends, the overhaul of the underwater hockey world championships… UWHnews looked into the matter in an attempt to dissect the latest retooling of a reform voted by the assembly and amended by the Board.
The most recent reform of the elimination zones for the 2025 Underwater Hockey World Championships raises new questions. Initially, a division into two geographical zones had been adopted by democratic vote: Asia-America (6 qualified teams) and Africa-Europe (6 qualified teams), with each zone having six qualifying places for the worlds.

However, the Board of Directors modified this distribution by introducing three distinct zones:
America (2 qualified teams)
Asia (4 qualified teams)
Europe-Africa (5 qualified teams)

An upgraded reform

The initial process followed the rules of democracy. By setting up two large zones with a balanced distribution of qualified teams, the aim was to ensure overall representativeness and fairer competition. The federations voted in favour of this approach. But the Board’s recent decision, imposing a third zone and redistributing the qualification quotas, appears to be a direct challenge to this vote.
Why was this new reform not put to a new vote? If such an important reform can be overturned by a small group of people, what is the real role of the federations in the decision-making process? It is also possible that the legal framework has been respected, and this article in no way denies this, it simply questions the dynamics after numerous reversals of the situation.
There is much more at stake than just the sport itself. If the voice of the federations is not respected, they will lose their influence on the development of the sport, in a system where their votes and opinions can be swept aside with a twist.

Competition dates revealed
Important information revealed by the CMAS at the beginning of the week: the dates for the interzone qualifiers have now been set. The Asia interzone will take place from 1 to 9 August 2025 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, while the Africa-Europe interzone will be held in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, from 15 to 23 August 2025. However, no information has yet been released about the qualifier for America.