In the past century, from a tentative start, athletics has truly earned its position as one of the most vibrant sports in the world, important not just for what it brings to participants in terms of life lessons - and at the very top level - the possibility of a professional career. This professionalism was recognised at our recent Congress in Edmonton in August 2001, when it was decided that the IAAF would henceforth be known as the International Association of Athletics Federations.

This handbook is really about the nuts and bolts of our Association's work. Without professional and rigorous attention to the rules, athletics has no meaning. For this reason, I hope you will all appreciate a major change to the layout of this Handbook - designed to make access and comprehension of the rules easier. In brief, our aim was to make the Handbook more "user friendly" to all the members of our athletics family. In many ways, this ethos could apply to our Association as a whole.

IAAF President Lamine Diack