Australia’s largest Paralympic team to compete abroad leaves for Beijing on Monday.
With the sporting powers of China, Great Britain and the US in their sights, the team of 170 disabled athletes will compete at the Paralympic games from September 6.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s wife, Therese Rein, and parliamentary secretary for disabilities and children’s services, Bill Shorten, will give the athletes an official send-off at Sydney International Airport.
“Our team of inspirational athletes are very well prepared for the tough competition they have ahead of them in Beijing,” Mr Shorten said.
The athletes, including 11 guide runners and cycling pilots for the sight impaired, will compete for a share of the 472 medals up for grabs at the Games.
Sport Minister Kate Ellis said Australian Paralympians had collected 908 medals from Paralympic competition in the past 48 years.
“This is the largest ever Paralympic team to compete overseas and I am greatly looking forward to celebrating their success in Beijing,” Ms Ellis said.
“Every Australian state and territory will be represented.”
The Paralympic team will be accompanied by 121 officials.

source: news.theage.com.au

No world tour for 2012 Olympic torch

The Olympic torch will be carried round Britain before the start of the 2012 Games — but there will be no repeat of China’s protest-scarred worldwide relay.
Tessa Jowell, the Olympics minister, said she had “a lot of enthusiasm” for the idea of the torch being taken round the “villages, towns and cities in the UK” which could apply to be part of the route.
Jowell, unveiling plans for four years of lead-up events, starting next month, said in an interview with The Sunday Times: “There would be no more powerful way of making them feel part of the Olympics, would there?”
Although welcoming the world will be one of the themes of the Cultural Olympiad that begins on the weekend of September 26, the torch relay is set to be restricted to Britain.
China’s decision to take the torch around the world turned into a global protest against its policies in Tibet, in which protesters scuffled with tracksuit-wearing security minders.
The plans for Britain’s Olympics, to be announced this week, show an attempt to create a more welcoming atmosphere than the impressive but gargantuan events at the bird’s nest stadium in Beijing.
A week ahead of the opening ceremony on July 27, 2012, two days of free performances will take place on five stages along the Thames representing the continents and Olympic rings.
The World River weekend will mark the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad which begins with the Open Weekend next month. Events include the illumination of Windsor Castle and other landmarks in the colours of London 2012.
Highlights over the coming four years will include festivals, free performances and the commissioning of a series of public works of art in each of the nine English regions, and one each in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These will become national focal points for the Olympic celebrations and new works could include sculptures on the scale of the 65ft-high Angel of the North.
Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst could be among those approached to help the Arts Council choose winners from ideas submitted.
Jowell also disclosed that organisers have shaved £1.5 billion off the cost of the Games by simplifying the design of the main stadium and aquatic centre, and reducing the size of the Olympic Park. She admitted more money than originally predicted would be needed, but insisted the total cost to taxpayers would not rise above the £9.3 billion budget.
“There’s no more money. None from the taxpayer, none from the lottery, none from the government,” she said.
Jowell, who has returned from three weeks in Beijing, said there were lessons to be learnt from China’s experience.
Although the 2008 Games were acclaimed as the most spectacular ever, there were empty seats at events, security was often overzealous, and the opening and closing shows were considered too long. Jowell believes there is a “good case” for staging shorter ceremonies and has staked her reputation on ensuring venues are packed.
“My ambition is to see seats filled, every Londoner having the opportunity to see some event, and people being able to come from around the country. It’s not simple, but we are determined to crack this,” she said.
Jowell promised investment in school sports, labelling the attitude of many teachers and councils that competition is bad for children as “complete idiocy”. The minister blamed the Conservatives and “ill- informed, politically correct Labour authorities” for eroding sport in state schools.
“It was a great injustice that was done in removing competition from schools and school sports. Kids learn an enormous amount from the brutality of competition,” said Jowell, adding that children benefited from learning how to be good losers as well as winners.

Boris Johnson, the London mayor, has indicated he will find a role for Jowell in planning for the Olympics if Labour loses the next election. She admitted the Conservatives’ huge poll lead meant the government was in a “very serious situation”, but insisted the situation was “utterly recoverable”, if Labour could demonstrate it was “still in the game”.

Cultural Olympiad
On the weekend of September 26-28, a four-year Cultural Olympiad will begin the countdown to London 2012. Highlights include:

— A total of 300 events, including the illumination of buildings such as Windsor Castle in Olympic colours.
— Each of Britain’s 12 regions will host a work of public art, such as a performance or sculpture, marking the Olympiad.
— A national singing day for Britain is intended to become a global event.
— July 2011: Construction finishes on main stadium.
— July 21-22, 2012: World River Festival welcomes the world to the Games. The event will feature five stages held along the Thames, inspired by the Olympic rings.
— July 27, 2012: Opening ceremony of the Games.

from: timesonline.co.uk

Police in China shoot dead 6 suspects in Xinjiang

Chinese police investigating a spate of attacks this month in western Xinjiang province shot dead six suspects and arrested three others, state media reported.
An exile group, meanwhile, accused police Saturday of gunning down the suspects, members of the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, after they surrendered.
Police encountered nine suspects in a corn field near the far western city of Kashgar on Friday evening, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The suspects had knives and tried to resist arrest, putting up a “desperate struggle,” it said late Friday.
A policeman and a local militia man were wounded in the clash, the report said.
Initial investigations linked the suspects to attacks on Aug. 12 and Aug. 27, Xinhua said. The report gave no other details.
Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uighur Congress, said armed police surrounded the corn field and asked the Uighur men through a loudspeaker to surrender themselves, promising to provide them with lawyers.
The suspects did not resist arrest and police with submachine guns opened fire after they had surrendered, Raxit said in a statement Saturday, citing accounts by local Uighurs.
An official from the Xinjiang government — speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media — said six suspects were shot dead. But he denied the men had been shot after surrendering and called the allegations “nonsense.”
The predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang saw three deadly attacks blamed on Uighur separatists before and during and the Beijing Olympics. Videos appeared online with self-professed Uighur militant groups threatening the games.
On Aug. 12, attackers jumped from a vehicle and stabbed civilian guards, killing three at a roadside checkpoint in Yamanya town, near Kashgar. The assailants escaped. Two Chinese policemen died and seven more were wounded after a clash Wednesday in a village in Jiashi county.
No one has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks. Government officials have blamed Uighur militants.
China has long said that insurgents among the region’s dominant ethnic Uighurs are leading an Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang — an oil and gas-rich region on the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations.
The Uighurs are Turkic-speaking Muslims with a language and culture distinct from the majority of Chinese.
Critics accuse Beijing of using claims of terrorism as an excuse to crack down on peaceful, pro-independence sentiment and expressions of Uighur identity.

source: ap.google.com

Games leave behind sleeker, greener Beijing

Huge investment for the Olympics will cement Beijing’s place as a world-class city and business centre, and leave a legacy of improvements for its residents.
Unlike Athens and some other past host cities, where the Games led to a mountain of debt and many of the venues now sit unused, Beijing and the Chinese government can comfortably afford the roughly $40 billion they have spent on the Games.
More importantly, less than a quarter of that bill has gone on purpose-built venues such as the Bird’s Nest stadium. The rest has been spent on infrastructure such as new subway lines and projects like upgrading buses and boilers to cleaner technology.
“Many of the changes were necessary for Beijing’s continued, brisk development, and the Olympics served to substantially accelerate their implementation,” said Denis Ma, associate director of research in the Beijing office of property consultants Jones Lang LaSalle.
Ma pointed to the transformation the ever-expanding subway lines will bring about, as they help reduce vehicle emissions and allow the development of residential hubs in the suburbs.
Jing Ulrich, chairman of China equities at JPMorgan Securities, noted a range of other benefits that would help with the city’s long-term development.
“With an improved transport system, financial services infrastructure, communications network and hospitality industry, post-Olympics Beijing will be better positioned to fulfill its potential as a world-class metropolis,” Ulrich said in a report.
The state-of-the-art venues are also a legacy in themselves.
The new operators of the Bird’s Nest, a consortium led by state investment group CITIC, plan to sell naming rights and make it home to one of Beijing’s professional soccer clubs, building a complex of hotels, restaurants and shops around it.

COST VS BENEFIT
AEG Worldwide, a U.S. sports and entertainment management firm hoping to tap into a post-Olympics boom, has already teamed up with the National Basketball Association’s NBA China to win the right to manage the Wukesong indoor stadium, which staged the Olympics basketball competition.

AEG is also looking at staging events in the Bird’s Nest.
“We’re interested in the Bird’s Nest. We do have content that can fill the Bird’s Nest occasionally,” President and Chief Executive Officer Tim Leiweke told Reuters, citing a few European soccer clubs, including some from the English Premier League.
Leiweke said that Beijing was unlikely to eclipse Shanghai as a destination for major sporting and entertainment events.
“Shanghai is probably the most important and attractive market in the world for us right now,” he said.
With many venues slated to be converted for use by the general public and several located inside universities, they are poised to benefit the broader community in a city of 17 million.
Equally important is the way the Games sparked the construction of new public spaces throughout the city, said Zou Huan, an urban planning expert at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Not only would the Olympic Green likely rival Tiananmen Square as a prime destination for tourists in the future, but the many new parks and green spaces will give ordinary Beijingers a break from often cramped living conditions.
“They resemble European city squares in the sense of how they give people a space outdoors to chat, to meet up. That’s very useful, and it is really changing the city life here,” said Zou.
Ideally, city officials would have had the time to carry out their plans with more attention to detail, so as to avoid sacrificing some buildings of historical value, he said.
Thousands of people were also forced to move to make way for the venues, parks and light rail lines.
“But you have to look at the costs and benefits,” Zou said. “Overall, I think the gains for Beijing’s urban landscape are more important.”

source: reuters.com

The Paralympic Village in Beijing officially opened its doors yesterday to Paralympic delegations from all over the world. The village is expected to be the temporary home for 7,400 guests, around 4,000 of whom are athletes, during their stay in Beijing.
The colourful ceremony gave organizers and hosts the opportunity to welcome the athletes, officials, staff and volunteers. Various high-ranking officials were present at the official opening, including Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu, BOCOG President Liu Qi, IPC President Sir Philip Craven and IPC Vice President Miguel Sagarra. The Chinese Paralympic delegation raised China’s national, signaling the official moving in of this year’s 547 member delegation, the largest in Chinese history.
Some of the facilities of the Paralympic Village, covering 66 hectares, have been adjusted to the needs of the Paralympic athletes. The entire complex meets specified accessibility standards to allow athletes independent living conditions. “Tactile and accessible pavements as well as other facilities for people with a disability have been installed in public areas,” said Chen Zhili, the Paralympic Village Mayor. “The serving tables were all lowered, the passageways were also enlarged and wheelchair-traction services by golf carts are also available,” she added.
The Paralympic Villages are equipped with relaxation areas, shops, gyms, restaurants and medical and massage rooms. The villages of the co-host cities Qingdao and Hong Kong also opened their doors yesterday.
After the Paralympic Games, the Village will become property of the city and will be used for housing.
In addition to the Village opening, a memorial wall dedicated to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was unveiled. Hui Liangyu said at the unveiling that the UN Convention was a guiding document for the international community to deal with affairs concerning persons with a disability and a milestone in the progress of human civilization.

from: paralympic.org

A shot for Olympic gold can be an opportunity of a lifetime for athletes. But for companies that spent heavily on advertising and marketing at the Olympics, the Beijing Games offered a different kind of golden opportunity: the chance to advertise their goods to a worldwide audience and for more exposure to consumer-rich China.
“Until China, never before has the market potential of the host country on its own been viewed as possibly worth the significant investment,” says Julius Roberge of branding company Siegel + Gale.
Twelve companies from a variety of industries acted as worldwide Olympic sponsors for the 2008 Games, while others sponsored individual teams or athletes.
Of the represented industries, three stood out as successes — sportswear, media and food and beverage — in their bids to seize worldwide recognition for their brands to boost sales and profit potential.
Every men’s swimming event was won by an athlete donning the Speedo LZR Racer suit, with 94 percent of all gold medals going to swimmers who wore one.
Speedo International is a unit of privately held Pentland Group, based in London.
Chinese sportswear brand Li Ning also got a boost after its founder lit the flame in the opening ceremony. Shares jumped as much as 13 percent during the Olympic Games.
“Li Ning might well have been the official sponsor for the games, in our opinion,” says Stifel Nicolaus analyst Thomas Shaw.
Audiences returned to watching broadcast TV to view their favorite events, even as Internet downloads of the competition surged.
General Electric (GE), the parent company of NBC, had the exclusive broadcast rights for the 17-day games. The network averaged 27.7 million viewers a night for its prime-time coverage, which was higher than the averages for both the 2004 and 2000 Olympics.
Food and beverage companies, meanwhile, were awarded with strong advertising and marketing relationships, including a Kellogg (K) deal with gold-medalist swimmer Michael Phelps and Coca-Cola’s (KO) unity-themed marketing campaign featuring Chinese basketball star Yao Ming.

source: seattletimes.nwsource.com

How to get your 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Tickets in BC

If you’ve ever dreamed of watching an Olympic event live and in person, here’s your chance. Between October 3 and November 7, 2008, Canadian residents can visit vancouver2010.com to request their choice of 2010 Olympic Winter Games tickets. Keep in mind, there’s no rush for Canadians to submit their request on day one, as ticket requests issued early have no advantage over those put forward closer to November 7.
Oversubscribed events, such as the ice hockey finals or the Opening Ceremony, will be allocated via lottery giving everyone who applies an equal chance to take in the action. Closer to Games time, remaining tickets will be available at box offices, through a call centre as well as online. Paralympic Winter Games tickets go on sale May 6, 2009. The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) will also be offering an Olympic Experience Package - a convenient way to see a variety of events while taking into account timing for transportation and early arrival at venues.

More good news? 2010 Olympic Winter Games admission prices start at $25, with half of the tickets available for $100 or less. In addition, US and all other international spectators can purchase their tickets through their respective National Olympic Committees.

source: travelvideo.tv

Is He Kexin 16 or 14? Doctors and forensics experts say bone growth could reveal how old the Olympic medalists really are.
How do you tell the age of a Chinese gymnast?
Don’t bother with those government-issued passports or birth certificates.

Go for the X-rays.
For all the global hand-wringing over how international gymnastics officials will ever figure out whether three members of the Chinese women’s team were old enough to compete, doctors and forensics experts said it’s actually not too difficult.
The science of determining age is has been honed by decades of treating patients with growth disorders, identifying youthful homicide victims and determining the deportation status of illegal immigrants.
“It would be relatively easy,” said Dr. David Senn, a forensic odontologist at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center who has analyzed numerous X-rays of immigrants apprehended at the border.
The science is based on measuring the growth of bones and teeth as children mature. Decades of data have been distilled into detailed tables recording the precise size and shape of skeletal components broken down by age, sex and race.
The task is so straightforward that Dr. Peter Hampl, president of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, said the Chinese government should just consent to X-rays and let the films speak for themselves.
“If there is nothing to be afraid of, let their kids be X-rayed,” he said. “It’s almost incriminating if they don’t.”
It may seem strange that amid the outsized pageantry of the Beijing Games, the biggest controversy has surrounded three tiny Chinese gymnasts whose combined weight is 216 pounds.
The ages of He Kexin, Yang Yilin and Jiang Yuyuan came into question weeks ago after the discovery of online registration records listing birth dates that would make all three girls 14 years old. Olympic rules require that a gymnast be at least 16 during the year the Games are held. The government attempted to put the issue to rest by producing passports that declared the girls met the age requirement.
The controversy reached Olympian proportions after the Chinese team beat the American gymnasts in the team competition. In addition to the team gold, He edged American Nastia Liukin for the top prize in uneven bars by a tiebreaker, and Yang won the bronze medal in that event and in the all-around competition.
After new complaints surfaced, the International Olympic Committee announced Friday that it was asking the International Gymnastics Federation to reexamine the Chinese gymnasts’ age.
Instead of searching through documents, the matter could be settled with X-rays, said Dr. Gil Brogdon, a professor emeritus of radiology at the University of South Alabama in Mobile and author of the textbook “Forensic Radiology.”
Bones fuse together according to a well-documented schedule. For girls between the ages of 13 and 17, the best places to look are the knee, wrist, elbow and iliac crest on the pelvis, he said. The younger they are, the more obvious the evidence.
“A Caucasian girl is going to fuse her knee centers at about age 15; they’re going to fuse their iliac crest at about age 16; and part of the elbow will start fusing around 13 or 14,” he said. “That’s the way you do it.”
For the Chinese gymnasts, investigators would have to consult growth tables for Asian girls, Brogdon said.
One complication with teenage girls is that strenuous exercise can suppress estrogen production, delaying bone development and making them appear to belong to a younger person, said Dr. Vicente Gilsanz, a professor of radiology and pediatrics at USC.
But Brogdon said that by comparing multiple bones, “you could come pretty close” to distinguishing a 14-year-old from a 16-year-old.
Teeth are also useful. U.S. immigration authorities often rely on dental X-rays to determine for deportation purposes whether an illegal immigrant is an adult or a minor.
“Of course, everybody who gets arrested says they are 17,” Senn said.
He said he can pinpoint ages within 18 months using images of a person’s wisdom teeth, which start forming around age 9 and are not fully developed until around 19. For the Chinese gymnasts, Senn said, he would also look at their second molars, which grow until age 15 or so.
Dr. Michael Baden, chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police, said that with both teeth and skeletal X-rays, “you should be able to get within 12 months” of someone’s age.
All this science probably won’t mean much because Chinese authorities are not likely to agree to let independent doctors take X-rays of their gymnasts.
In that case, sports fans will be left to contemplate the girls’ physical appearance.

source: latimes.com

The real He Kexin’s age! two gold medal stolen by the cheating Chinese?
There has been a controversy as to He Kexin’s actual age. Her 2008 passport and the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) list her date of birth as January 1, 1992, which would make her 16 years, during the 2008 Olympic opening ceremonies and therefore old enough to compete. However, before the 2008 Olympics, He’s age was reported by the Chinese press, including the state news service, Xinhua, as 13 in 2007 and 14 in 2008 in news articles that were later taken off-line. Her birth date has also been given on several registration lists of the General Administration of Sport in China, the Chengdu Sports Bureau and other registration sources as “1994-1-1″ (January 1, 1994), which would make her 14 years old during the Opening ceremonies, and therefore too young to participate in the 2008 Summer Olympics.In addition, in a November 2007 speech in Wuhan, Chinese sporting official Liu Peng introduced He as a 13-year-old.
Chinese officials have denied the allegations, stating in August 2008 that Xinhua had not confirmed He’s age before filing their news reports. He herself, speaking to reporters after the Olympic team final, noted, “my real age is 16. I don’t pay any attention to what everyone says.” On August 2, the International Olympic Committee stated that they would not investigate the discrepancy in He’s reported age, stating that the FIG’s own verification system would be acceptable proof of eligibility. The FIG, in responding to the situation, stated that they would not ask for additional proof of age beyond the passport already supplied by Chinese officials.

How old are you He Kexin?

However, the matter continues to be a source of controversy among members of the gymnastics community and the media. The Times reported that a computer expert “Stryde” working for a New York based firm called the Intrepidus Group was able to access cached pages on the search engine Baidu showing He to be underage after websites concerning the athlete on the search engine Google were blocked.
On August 21, the IOC announced that, in light of the new evidence, they had asked the FIG to reopen the investigation into He and her teammates’ ages. On Friday August 22, 2008, the IOC said they had not uncovered any evidence of wrongdoing “so far” and expressed confidence that the Chinese Federation’s documents were correct. However, the FIG held an emergency meeting about the situation on August 23 and requested additional documentation for every gymnast on the Chinese team, with the sole exception of team captain Cheng Fei. On August 24, a Chinese official addressed the registration lists found online, stating that the discrepancy was due to an administrative error which took place when He was transferred between teams while participating in the InterCity Games in 2007.The FIG has not set any official timeline on closing the investigation, stating on August 23, “this process may take some time, but in due course, the FIG will make a full report of our findings to the International Olympic Committee.” The IOC confirmed on August 28 that the FIG investigation was still active and in progress.

How hacker found proof of He Kexin’s age

In his spare time Mike Walker likes to find things on web servers that were never meant to be found.

On Monday, after curiosity got the better of him, the 33-year-old computer security consultant toiled for hours without success, as he tried to dig up more information about the allegedly under-aged Chinese gymnast He Kexin.
On Tuesday, after redefining the parameters of his Google Hack, he hit the jackpot. Bingo! The mother lode.
On Google’s cache he found evidence of a record of He Kexin’s birth on a spreadsheet belonging to the General Administration of Sport of China - the country peak sports body.
But the data had been removed.
On the Chinese search engine Baidu, he went one better. He found two caches of Excel spreadsheet which had been published on the web and both of them showed He Kexin’s birthday as January 1, 1994.
The cache is the snapshot of web pages crawled by search engine spiders which map the web and database their findings.
The following day on Google’s Chinese search engine, google.com.cn, he found yet more cached spreadsheets from the General Administration of Sport of China also showing the birth date as January 1, 1994.
This would make the tiny gymnast - who won two gold medals at the Olympics - 14 years old. Her Olympic credentials list her birth date as January 1, 1992, which would make her 16.
Regulations that were introduced in 1997 by the world gymnastics federation require gymnasts to turn 16 in the year of the Games to be eligible to compete.
“I spent a large amount (of time) failing (to find anything) and a small amount succeeding,” Walker, who works for the Washington DC-based Intrepidus Group.
“It takes a little bit of faith to believe that you can find something out there and sometimes it pays off.
“I put it on Blogger (a free Google blog service) and went out to dinner and the world came calling.”
As a direct result of Walker’s findings and the resulting press coverage that it sparked, the International Olympic Committee yesterday announced that it had called for a review of the age falsification allegations surrounding China’s dual gold medal-winning gymnast.
“We have asked the gymnastics federation to look into what have been a number of questions and apparent discrepancies on this case. And they’ve been working with the [Chinese] national federation … to have a full clarification on this topic,” IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies told a news conference yesterday.
Late last night, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) issued a statement saying that it had widened its inquiry into the age falsification claims.
The federation said it had asked the Chinese Gymnastic Association to submit further documents testifying to the birth dates of He Kexin and four fellow gymnasts - Jiang Yuyuan, Li Shanshan, Deng Linlin and Yang Yilin.
“On receipt of these documents, the FIG will forward its conclusions to the International Olympic Committee. It is in the interests of all concerned, not least the athletes themselves, to resolve this issue once and for all,” the statement said.
Walker is still surprised by the reaction to his findings. “It’s become the centre of a maelstrom and international media attention,” he said.
“I never set out to change the course of the Olympics; I set out as I always do, a curious researcher, intent on the search for truth and the knowledge I could acquire along the way,” he said in a blog post.

The governing body of world gymnastics has demanded additional documentary evidence to prove that five gold medal-winning China gymnasts were old enough to compete in the Olympic Games.

The Chinese Gymnastics Association has been asked to supply further evidence to prove the birthdates of Jiang Yuyuan, Li Shanshan, Deng Linlin, Yang Yilin and He Kexin, after more questions emerged over the stated ages of He and Yang.
The five competitors won gold medals in the team gymnastics event, while He became the darling of the host nation after she won gold on the uneven bars and Yang picked up two bronze medals in individual events.
A US computer expert told The Times on Thursday that he had uncovered Chinese government documents proving that He and Yang were only 14. Both appeared to have been registered as two years younger in previous years.
The online documents were the latest pieces of evidence to have emerged in recent months suggesting that the two athletes were two years beneath the minimum age of 16, in a sport where younger gymnasts are thought to have an advantage, being more flexible and thus better able to perform more difficult routines.
In a statement issued last night, the International Gymnastics Federation said that it was demanding additional evidence from the Chinese association “to resolve this issue once and for all”.
The federation did not specify precisely what documents it would require to satisfy itself that the two gymnasts were eligible. However, Lu Shanzan, China’s coach, said that the documents that had now been passed to the federation included He’s present and former passport, her ID card and family residence permit.
Lu said that all of these documents showed her to have been born in 1992 and complained that coaching staff and the girl’s parents were indignant and upset at the investigation. “Surely it’s not possible that these documents are still not sufficient proof of her birth date,” he said. “The passports were issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The identity card was issued by China’s Ministry of Public Security. If these valid documents are not enough to clarify this problem, then what will you believe?”
The investigation has not been reported in the state newspapers. Leading Chinese news websites also failed to cover the story, and yesterday sites running reports of the inquiry appeared to have been closed down. Even the debates of the issue in Internet chat rooms, which raged yesterday morning, disappeared in the afternoon as site-hosting companies moved to censor what could be a sensitive topic.
Some web commentators blamed the Americans for the inquiry and called for a retaliatory investigation of Michael Phelps, the US swimmer, who won eight gold medals at the Water Cube. Others were not surprised by the controversy. One wrote: “They will certainly now say that reports that she was 13 in 2007 were incorrect - so that she keeps her gold medal” - an apparent reference to a theory that He might previously have registered as younger than she was, in order to compete in a Chinese competition.
“Plank of Wood” commented: “Changing one’s age in China, especially in the past, is very common. When I was at school I changed my age to get into the class I wanted. Later I changed it back.” All of these comments had vanished from the web by the afternoon.
The latter point was repeated by a former Chinese sportsman yesterday. He told The Times that in his youth he had once changed his age to participate in competition with younger players. “It used to be very common, but it is getting less and less so,” he said.

How would you strip athlete of a medal?
Under statute of limitations rules, the IOC and other sports bodies can go back eight years to request the return of medals and nullify competition results. This means that even if the He Kexin case becomes a protracted affair, as is likely, the Committee has until 2016 to decide if it wishes to act on the findings of the investigation by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique.
However, once a decision has been reached, action is usually swift. When last year Marion Jones, the American five-time 2000 Olympic champion, admitted using steroids, she was officially stripped of her medals within weeks.
Given that the IOC is based in Lausanne, on the banks of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the usual method of return once the Games have ended is by postal courier. Two athletes have handed their medals straight back in Beijing - Ara Abrahamian, the bronze-medal winning Greco-Roman wrestler from Sweden, and Jong Su Kim, the North Korean shooter who won bronze and silver.
After disqualification, standings are normally readjusted, with the second-place finisher moving up to gold, third to silver and fourth to bronze.

Michael Phelps 100M Butterfly Victory!!!
Incredible: Phelps’ Miracle Finish Frame-by-Frame Underwater

Following is a selection of the top 10 moments from the Beijing Olympics:

1) Usain Bolt breaks the 100 meters world record. Bolt already owned the record and in front of a packed Bird’s Nest stadium he ran 9.69 seconds. He thumped his chest in triumph over the last few meters before his ‘marksman’ celebration which became one of the lasting images of the Games.

2) Michael Phelps roars in triumph and relief after American team mate Jason Lezak overtook France’s Alain Bernard on the final leg of the 4×100 freestyle relay to keep alive Phelps’s dream of beating Mark Spitz’s record from 1972 of seven golds in a Games - a dream he was to realize.

3) Liu Xiang dejectedly walks away from the track as he realizes he has to withdraw from the defense of his 110 meters hurdles title because of a leg injury. Liu was the most popular sportsman in China and his grimacing departure clouded the Games for millions of home fans.

4) Russia’s Yelena Isinbayeva turns the Bird’s Nest into her private theatre with a gold medal and world record-breaking pole vault performance that captivated the 91,000 crowd. After she spent most of the competition lying under a towel, she broke her own world mark with a leap of 5.05 meters.

Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia breaks the world pole vault record

5) The Opening Ceremony. It emerged that some of the performance seen on television had been enhanced by computers, a child singer was replaced by a supposedly prettier face to mime to her voice and representatives of China’s ethnic minorities were no such thing. But it was a jaw-dropping beginning to the Games, culminating in former gymnast Li Ning being swung up the roof of the stadium and ‘running’ around the top level before lighting the cauldron.

6) German weightlifter Matthias Steiner kisses a picture of his late wife Susann on the gold medal podium, choking back tears over the promise he made to her that he would keep their Olympic dream. The super-heavyweight made the pledge to Susann at her bedside in hospital as she lay dying after a car crash in 2007.

7) American Matt Emmons blows a 3.3-point lead on the very last shot of a 120-shot competition to throw away the gold medal in the “marathon” event of shooting. Four years ago in Athens he had fired at the wrong target and squandered a 3-point lead.

Usain Bolt breaks Michael Johnson’s 200 meters record. Charging towards the finish line, Bolt has his eye on the clock all the way and once again celebrates his triumph in style — this time, after he completed his run.

9) Rohullah Nikpai wins Afghanistan’s first Olympic medal with a bronze in the men’s 58-kg taekwondo. Proof that no matter how tough the conditions you have to train in, Olympic success is achievable if you have the talent.

10) Estonian Gerd Kanter celebrates his discus gold medal by sprinting down the 100 meter track at the Bird’s Nest and mimicking Bolt’s marksman routine. High school jinks in a week when fun was put back into track and field.

from: reuters.com

all about sport and Olympics here at RobLadin dot com

Three London 2012 venues could be discarded if a financial review ordered by the British government discovers they will not be cost effective.
KPMG, a leading financial management consultancy, is scrutinizing the Greenwich Park development, which is due to accommodate the shooting venue in front of the historic Royal Artillery Barracks, equestrian and basketball at the main Olympic site.
It’s part of a complete surveillance of the 2012 project instigated by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to ensure it stays within the overall US$17 billion budget.
It is “possible but unlikely” the iconic venues at Greenwich Park could be scrapped as a result, Olympics minister Tessa Jowell said.
While money seemed no object for the Beijing Olympics, soaring costs have seen the British plans - which will regenerate a derelict area in east London - come under intense scrutiny from government watchdogs, politicians and taxpayers.
“We have commissioned KPMG to do a report on the equestrian, shooting and basketball venues, looking at whether the Olympic experience and the legacy they will provide represents value for money,” Jowell said. “When you take the costs for these venues, it seems like a lot of money to a lot of people.
“It is a sort of testing-to-destruction to see whether that spending can be justified.”
The Olympic Delivery Authority has warned that London’s preparations are being affected by turmoil in the global financial markets, which could make the project go over budget.
London organizers moved shooting from Bisley - 72 kilometres away from the Olympic Park - to the more visually appealing barracks in Woolwich, a 10-minute drive away, during the bid process.
But Britain’s shooters have since expressed opposition to the 7,500-seat temporary venue at the Royal Artillery Barracks in southeast London that would cost more than US$48 million and would be demolished after the games.
British Shooting wants a gun club in Dartford, a 45-minute drive away from the Olympic Park in London’s East End, to be revamped to become a permanent range for all shooting disciplines.
Basketball will be played at a temporary 12,000-seat arena in the Olympic Park, which will provide no legacy, while the finals will be at O2 Arena, formerly the Millennium Dome.
Ecological concerns have been raised about plans to locate the equestrian events in London’s oldest Royal Park at Greenwich, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage site.

from: canadianpress.google.com

Just when you thought the medal ceremonies were all over, British athletes are heading to Beijing in a bid for sporting glory.
More than 200 contenders are traveling to China to take part in the 2008 Paralympic Games between September 6 and 17.
Competing in 18 sports, the team hopes to add to the recent haul of gold medals by TeamGB and finish in the top three countries.
China is widely expected to top the medal table.
Most of the British squads will travel to the Far East - many via the ParalympicsGB holding camps in Hong Kong and Macau - over the next week.
The GB squad’s returning champions include archer John Cavanagh, 800m runner Danny Crates, swimmer Gareth Duke and cyclists Darren Kenny and Aileen McGlynn.
At the Athens 2004 Paralympic Games, Britain finished second in the medal table with a total of 35 golds, 30 silver and 29 bronze medals.

from. sky.com

Japan is well known for bribery in getting international events. If they can’t do it then they will try to bribe someone to get things going. For the Beijing Olympic Games in Beijing it wasn’t all that clear what was going on.
Keirin is a cycling sport popular in Japan. However, it is virually unknown outside that country. The organisers of keirin wanted to make it more popular. How to do that? By making it an Olympic sport. And how to persuade the Olympic Games to adopt the sport? Maybe a $3 million bribe helped:

Documents given to the BBC suggest that $3m (£1.5m) was paid by organizers of a Japanese cycling event to the UCI - the world cycling body. The payments were allegedly made in the 1990s. The sport, called the keirin, was supported for inclusion into the Games by the UCI, and admitted in 1996.

For the Nagano olympics:

Meanwhile, the mayor of Nagano said that the city’s Olympic bidding committee’s decision to destroy its expense books had been proper and merely “the Japanese way of doing things.” Mayor Tasuku Tsukada said he left the decision on how to destroy the expense books to other officials. He explained that the expenses were approved at the committee’s general meeting and that meant, as a matter of course, that the records could be destroyed. “In Japan, that means it’s all done and finished,” he said. Some IOC officials inspecting Nagano as a possible site for the 1998 Winter Games were entertained by geisha, an official admitted yesterday. But he denied they were prostitutes. “We couldn’t very well have had the governor pour drinks,” Sumikazu Yamaguchi, a member of the bidding committee, said. “All they did was pour drinks and dance.”

from Wikipedia:

the 1998 Games went to Nagano, Japan in a 46-to-42 vote. Many felt the reason was because the US had recently been awarded the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, Georgia. Others, including Welch, believed it was because Nagano had better wined and dined the officials.

In 2006, a report ordered by the Nagano region’s governor said the Japanese city provided millions of dollars in an “illegitimate and excessive level of hospitality” to IOC members, including $4.4 million spent on entertainment alone.

And read this one: (source: findarticles.com)

A new report on Nagano’s successful bid for the 1998 Winter Games, ordered by the regional government, found that an “illegitimate and excessive level of hospitality” was handed out by the Japanese city.
The Nagano Prefecture Investigation Group Report comes more than 14 years after the International Olympic Committee chose Nagano over Salt Lake City in a close vote, even though the Utah capital was widely seen as better qualified to host the Olympics.
Salt Lake City went on to be awarded the 2002 Winter Games but sparked a worldwide scandal eight years ago when Utah bidders were accused of buying IOC votes with more than $1 million in cash, gifts, trips, scholarships and even medical treatments.
There were always similar concerns about Nagano’s bid but no proof because records had been burned. Now, according to an abstract in English of the investigation group’s report, dated Nov. 22, 2005, new problems with the Nagano bid have been documented, including:
– Nearly $544,000 (all dollar figures are calculated at current conversion rates from Japanese yen) in souvenirs were given out during the bid, an average of about $5,700 per IOC member. The gift limit at the time under IOC rules was $200.
– More than $4.4 million was spent to entertain IOC members during the bid, an average of about $46,500 per IOC member.
– There was no accounting of how approximately $776,000 was used during the 1991 IOC session in Birmingham, England, where the host city for the 1998 WinterGames was selected.

One government official told the investigation group that the money was used for “lobbying and promotional activities, and simply there were no receipts. Therefore, a phrase like ‘unaccounted for’ is not right, because it sounds like somebody stole it.”

– The total price tag for promoting Nagano’s Olympic bid was more than $24 million, almost five times as much as Salt Lake City’s bid for the 1998 Winter Games reportedly cost.
– The previously revealed destruction of 90 boxes of bid records — possibly, the report stated, at the request of the then- prefectural governor — “should still be viewed as a criminal act,” because the records were supposed to have been maintained for five years.

A bid committee member told the investigation group that the records “probably included a great deal of IOC-related secrets and personal information — it might lead to trouble if the documents were kept.”

The investigation group concluded the reason was because during the bid “illegitimate and excessive levels of hospitality were offered” that had to be hidden from Nagano citizens.

– A signature was forged on a document required to take a ceremonial sword, reportedly valued at $13,000, out of Japan to be presented to then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch. The report suggests whoever forged the signature might be guilty of a criminal offense.

The report appears to confirm the suspicions many had after Salt Lake City became the subject of local, national and international investigations. Rumors had started shortly after Nagano’s victory about IOC members having been provided with geishas and expensive artwork and electronics.
One story frequently told was that the Nagano bid committee reportedly gave members of the IOC expensive video cameras just before the IOC vote, while Salt Lake City’s bid team handed out disposable cameras.
Among the critics was Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who blamed Salt Lake City’s loss to Nagano on “corruption,” later claiming “Japanese leadership just basically bought the Olympics. . . . We were swindled out of it.”
But soon after the Salt Lake scandal surfaced, it was revealed that Nagano had set fire to its bid records. That appeared to make it impossible to verify allegations that theJapanese city violated IOC rules.
The Nagano investigation group, however, was able to piece together information at least about how much money was spent, by combing through a pile of documents that weren’t destroyed and interviewingJapanese bid and Olympic officials. Their report does not include details of what the Nagano bid actually purchased for IOC members.
But even though the report “revealed new findings, including how much public money has been misused,” there has been little reaction to it, according to journalist Tatsuya Iwase, one of five members appointed to the group created by Nagano Gov. Yasuo Tanaka in February 2004.
Despite the lack of interest, though, Iwase said in an e-mail that the advisory group is continuing to look at the impact of the Olympics on the finances of Nagano, a relatively rural mountain region known as the “Roof of Japan.”
Anti-Olympic activists in Nagano have long questioned the amount of money invested in the 1998 Winter Games, complaining that residents have been left with little more than debt.
Tanaka’s successful campaign to lead the prefecture, an entity similar to a state, focused on the need to investigate the Olympic bid further.
Repeated attempts by the Deseret Morning News to contact Tanaka about the report were unsuccessful.
Canadian IOC member Dick Pound, who headed the Switzerland-based organization’s investigation in the Salt Lake scandal that resulted in the ouster of some members, said Friday he had not even heard about the Nagano report.
“It might be of interest,” Pound said, even though the IOC investigative commission he led has long been “out of business.” He was surprised at the size of some of the expenditures listed in the Nagano report.
“That sounds high to me,” Pound said of the amounts the Nagano report said was spent on IOC members for gifts and entertainment. “But then some of my colleagues are higher maintenance than I am.”
It was Salt Lake City’s meticulous record-keeping that helped land its bid in trouble. The scandal started with a letter from an IOC member’s daughter about the financial assistance she was receiving from bid officials.
The records even led to the two top leaders of the Salt Lake bid, Tom Welch and Dave Johnson, being prosecuted by the federal government on numerous felony charges related to the scandal, but the case was thrown out midtrial by a Utah judge in 2003.
Welch could not immediately be reached for comment about the Nagano report.

How much will they try to pay to each IOC member this time?
IOC: don’t be a fool again! Slap the japanese bribers!

read more articles about the bribes of the japanese:
- 1999: Olympic officials face bribery charges

Bribes in Japan are just normal practice to have things rolling.

Beijing Paralympics 2008

The proposal to keep the Olympic flame lit until the end of the games for the disabled has gone unheeded. This would have been “a strong sign” to the international community, which often forgets the daily difficulties faced by people with handicaps.

The Paralympics represent “the ideal opportunity” for China and its people to improve “awareness and understanding” toward the disabled, even if the “ignorance” surrounding the world of the handicapped is still today “a source of misunderstanding”. This was the hope expressed by Li Caimao, director of the government committee for the disabled, on the occasion of the lighting of the Olympic torch for the Games for the disabled, scheduled for September 6-17 in Beijing. It is a hope that seems destined to remain just that, just as for the hopes of “openness” connected to the Olympic Games.
Meanwhile, yesterday, at the Temple of Heaven, in the presence of Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao, the torch relay began that will pass through the streets of the city until the inauguration of the games. 850 people with various disabilities will carry the torch. Also at the ceremony was Deng Pufang, son of former leader Deng Xiaoping and president of the Chinese federation for persons affected by disabilities. During the tumultuous period of the Cultural Revolution, he was thrown from a window and was paralyzed.
The Paralympics could have been, therefore, a chance to show the world how concerned China is about people with physical or psychological problems, but in this case as well, this hope has remained nothing more than hope, as the head of an NGO for the disabled in Beijing tells AsiaNews: “We proposed simulating the extinguishing of the Olympic flame”, the source in China recounts, “in order to then keep it lit until the end of the Paralympics, as a sign of continuity between the two events”. At first, the idea met with a favorable response from some government officials, but in the end “nothing was done”.

“Keeping the flame lit”, emphasizes the activist who has worked with the disabled in the country for years, “would have represented a strong signal to the international community. It would have testified to the attention and care with which China accompanies persons affected by handicaps, bringing prominence and interest to the sporting event dedicated to them”. In spite of criticism on matters of “human rights and individual freedoms”, such a gesture would have demonstrated China’s greater attention to the “rights of each individual”, including the disabled, who are often marginalized in the rich, developed Western societies. “Unfortunately, even here”, the activist complains, “there is still much work to be done”.

The activist confirms, finally, the “scarce interest” in the Paralympics, with commercials and news coverage “practically nonexistent in the media”, while “the level of vigilance has not been lowered”, and there has been no “greater freedom of movement or expression”. “In reality, the Olympic event”, the activist concludes, “was only a pretext to show China’s power to the world; the only thing that mattered was that everything went smoothly, and there were no incidents”.

From September 6-17, Beijing will host the Paralympics, which will see the participation of about 4,000 athletes from all over the world. There are 83 million disabled in China, about 6% of the population, one million of whom live in the capital. About 200,000 disabled were involved in organizing the Paralympics, or will carry out some form of service in relation to the sporting event, with additional help from 12,000 volunteers.

source: asianews.it