The decision to promote Fang, who has been UIPM's assistant for international affairs since 2008, was taken today at the organisation's Executive Board meeting in Frankfurt. 

"I am very pleased with Mrs Fang becoming UIPM's secretary general," said Dr h.c. Klaus Schormann, the President of the UIPM.

"I have a very close working relationship with her, and she has impressed me with her extraordinary abilities over the past five years.

"This appointment shows our commitment to women's equality, putting a women in this important position."

Fang is also the vice-president of the International Cheer Union and, following her new appointment, will relocate from China to Monte Carlo, where the UIPM are based.

"Seven years ago I stepped into the modern pentathlon world, five years ago I joined in UIPM family before the [2008] Beijing Olympic Games, I was more and more attracted by this sport and the people of this sport.

"In the last 10 years, UIPM had been very focused on modernisation to become more exciting and challenging sport for the world's most complete athletes,

"I fully believe for next four years, we will continually develop, popularise, and promote modern pentathlon not only with pentathlon, also with biathle [run-swim-run], triathle [run-shoot-swim] which are under modern pentathlon brand.

"More united and better cooporation, will be my goal for future management of UIPM."

Mexico's Ivar Sisniega was appointed by the Executive Board as UIPM's first vice-president while Russia's Vyacheslav Aminov was given the role of the vice-president for business affairs.

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