International Table Hockey Federation

ITHF was created at a meeting of representatives of 15 countries in Riga in 2005, where they came to the next World Cup . It was officially registered in the Czech Republic as a non-governmental organization. The registration status of that time is currently insufficient for effective work, and options for re-registration in another country and obtaining a higher status are being discussed.

Since 2018, the organization is headed by the representative of Denmark Axelsen ^[6] . Representatives of Russia, the USA, Estonia and Ukraine were also elected to the executive committee ^[1] .

The Constitution of the Federation states that it is a non-profit international non-governmental organization, the members of which are associations of world table hockey players representing their countries.

Associations wishing to join the ITHF must be officially registered in their country as a table hockey association, have democratically elected leadership, a certain number of active adult players and open tournaments. Representatives of countries that do not comply with these requirements remain observers.

The highest authority of the ITHF belongs to the Conference of Delegates, that is, a vote of representatives of member states, at which all officials of the organization are elected and other contentious issues such as rule changes are resolved ^[4] .

Russia

In Russia, there are more than a dozen regional federations, associations, leagues, etc. table hockey, which are combined by the Moscow RFNH ("Russian Federation of table hockey") . It was the RFH that ITHF recognized as Russia's representative in it, although the Federation of St. Petersburg tried to challenge this choice in the early days, in 2011 asking ITHF to transfer to it the competence of organizing tournaments in Russia ^[7] . The RFNH holds open championships and cups of Russia in different cities where there are active local federations. However, the RFNH for 2019 still does not have the official status of a sport federation, which in the early years of the RFNH was considered undesirable ^[8] , and the attempt to register table hockey with the sport in 2009 was unsuccessful. Now RFNH is registered as a regional public organization, and for legal reasons during registration the word "Russian" is also replaced by the word "Regional" ^[9] . This lack of official recognition legally complicates the organization of tournaments and makes their status controversial, and in 2018 the initiative group created the public association "LLC RFNH", declaring its goal to achieve official registration under the law of the number of regions with local branches. The required number of regions has not yet been recruited ^[10] . At the request of the ITHF Charter, in the summer of 2019, Presidential elections were held among Russian players in RFNH, in which incumbent President Alexei Titov won. ^[eleven]

Other countries

• In Belarus, table hockey as a competition began in Novopolotsk , where A. Knyazyuk, who visited foreign tournaments, created a local league in 2004. Novopolovsk residents helped arrange tournaments in Minsk ^[12] . Nevertheless, the quantitatively and organizationally Belarusian table hockey developed slowly and only in 2019 Belarus was accepted into the ITHF.
• For a long time Kazakhstan was represented at the tournaments only by citizens living in Moscow, until tournaments in Almaty began in 2013, and a year later in Shymkent ^[13] .
• Ukraine began almost simultaneously with Latvia and Russia according to the Russian version, creating regional federations, however, internal conflicts created a lag of its development by several years ^{[14] [15]} . Now this lag is over and Ukraine takes the third place in the world by rating of players.
• Latvia is the only country in 2019 in which table hockey is recognized as a sport at the state level and enjoys state support ^[16] . In 2006, the Latvian National Federation of National Economy received official status and was included in the list of sports federations of Latvia ^[17] .
• Estonia lags behind in the same way by strengthening ties with the state, in particular, Minister of Culture Indrek Saar participated in the opening of the Tallinn Cup in 2018 ^[18] .
• In Lithuania , the table hockey system is practically limited to two clubs in Vilnius and Lithuania is not yet a member of the ITHF by 2019, although it regularly sends its players to international competitions at all levels.

The ITHF publishes a weekly updated World Ranking, i.e. a player strength rating based on their results in the competition. Ratings of juniors, women, veterans, clubs and teams are also calculated separately. In 2019, the overall rating is headed by Russian Maxim Borisov ^[5] .

In its Constitution, the ITHF is guided by the thesis that table hockey is understood only as glades produced by Stiga ^[4] and has the opposite extreme: the World Table Hockey Association (WTHA), which recognizes as table hockey not only all subspecies of traditional table hockey as well as air hockey and billiards hockey, which at the same time have their own federations. European WTHA is currently virtually independent and mainly engaged in billiards hockey ^[19] . ITHF does not currently have significant global competition, but ITHF is just one of several organizations in North America, with the rest either representing the same manufacturer or recognizing a multi-standard - in particular, CTHA ( “Canadian Table Hockey Association” ) recognizes different standards are equivalent, despite the fact that its leader simultaneously held a post in the ITHF Executive Committee ^{[20] [21]} . This attitude is also characteristic of other Canadian organizations, for example, WTHL ( “Winnipeg table hockey league” ) considers Coleco as its main standard, but also recognizes 12 other glade producers ^[22] , or originally Quebec NTHL ( “National Table Hockey League” ), conducting 9 tournaments per year at Coleco venues in the US and Canada ^[23] .