Olympics Times – Sports Daily

Pressure on the United States Olympic Committee to renegotiate its existing revenue-sharing agreement with the International Olympic Committee rose to another level when an angry group of Olympic leaders voted to terminate the contract and renegotiate a new one.
The Association of Summer Olympic International Federations passed a non-binding resolution on Tuesday to end the U.S.O.C.’s current open-ended contract that agreement gives the United States 20 percent of the I.O.C.’s global sponsorship revenue — the same amount as all the other Olympic committees, combined — and 12.75 percent of the television revenue.
“The greed of this organization is unlimited. Totally unlimited,” Hein Verbruggen, the former chief of the International Cycling Union and an honorary I.O.C. member, said to The Associated Press. “It infuriates everybody and especially me.”
The international federations are meeting this week in Denver at a gathering called Sportaccord. Verbruggen is its chairman.
“The way they treat us, there’s no respect, no respect at all,” Verbruggen said. “It’s infuriating. I have no other words.”
The U.S.O.C., however, has emphasized that the United States generates a big chunk of the I.O.C. revenues and that U.S.-based companies provide most of the sponsorship money. The United States television contract is also far more lucrative than in any other country. To televise last year’s Beijing Games, NBC paid about $894 million. The European Broadcasting Union paid about $443.5 million. Chinese television networks paid about $7 million.
“We’re looking for a long-term solution, and it’s probably not best to do it in an emotional or pressure environment,” Bob Ctvrtlik, the U.S.O.C.’s vice chairman for international relations, told The Associated Press. “It’s not easy. It is complicated. I think we need to do that in a nice, calm manner.”
The impassioned debate comes at a delicate time for the U.S.O.C., with the bid to bring the Olympics to Chicago in 2016 ramping up. The vote on which city will host those Games is scheduled for October.
An I.O.C. evaluation commission will visit Chicago in early April. It will also visit the other three cities vying for the Games, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.
Both sides in the revenue-sharing tiff deny that the Chicago bid would be affected by the revenue disagreement, which is not expected to be resolved this week.
Chicago 2016 chairman Pat Ryan said that the disagreement has nothing to do with the bid.
Even so, Verbruggen said: “I like the guys in Chicago. I really like Pat Ryan. I’d think they might be embarrassed with this whole thing.”

Female Ski Jumpers Ask to Meet With I.O.C. President
A group of international female ski jumpers have asked the I.O.C. president, Jacques Rogge, to meet with their representatives in Denver this week, in hopes of convincing the committee to allow female ski jumpers into the 2010 Games. In a 2006 decision, the I.O.C. barred women from participating in the sport at the Vancouver Olympics.
The athletes said that participation in their sport was growing quickly, outpacing several other Winter Games sports.
“We’re ready,” Lindsey Van, a world champion and American national team member, said in a statement. “Our sport has developed incredibly in the three years since that decision, and we would really appreciate the opportunity to tell our story to him personally.”
Fifteen female ski jumpers, including Van, have brought a lawsuit against the Vancouver Olympics organizing committee, citing gender discrimination. A hearing is scheduled for April 20 in British Columbia Supreme Court.

source: nytimes.com

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Softball will seek to rejoin the Olympics alone after its governing body on Friday rejected baseball’s proposal to make a joint pitch for inclusion.
Softball and baseball were dropped from the Olympics after last year’s Beijing Games but are among seven sports targeting the 2016 event when two sports will be added to the lineup.
In lobbying efforts, the International Softball Federation (ISF) has attempted to distance itself from baseball, which has been criticised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for Major League Baseball’s failure to tackle doping issues and for not freeing top players to participate in the Games.
Golf, squash, rugby, karate and rollersports are the others sports hoping to join the Olympics.
“The ISF recently received a proposal from the International Baseball Federation for a combined approach for Olympic Games programme status,” ISF president Don Porter said in a statement.
“However, having looked at all the factors involved, the ISF has decided that softball will not combine with any other sport and stands by the current proposals to the International Olympic Committee submitted in our recent response to their questionnaire.
“We have offered the IOC a doping-free, universal team sport that reflects Olympic values all over the world.
“Softball is also a stand-alone sport with its own rules, values, and philosophy.”
Since softball was voted out of the Olympics in 2005, the ISF has launched a vigorous campaign for reinstatement.
Softball has attempted to address the IOC’s two biggest concerns that the sport is not played at the highest level in enough countries and is dominated by the U.S..
The ISF has introduced several new competitions around the world and pointed to Japan’s upset win over the U.S. in the gold medal final in Beijing as a sign the sport is growing.

The IOC will vote on the inclusion of up to two new sports during its congress in Copenhagen in October.

source: reuters.com

IT’s a strange world in which Michael Phelps can win a record eight Olympic gold medals and still be challenged for pre-eminence in the year of the Beijing Games.

But a bolt from the blue Caribbean, in the shape of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, managed to drag the spotlight from the Water Cube to the Bird’s Nest, as two of history’s greatest athletes framed the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge declared the two men the “icons of the Games”.

In a record-breaking year for records, the pair were also the foremost exponents of the art of going where no athlete has gone before.

Appropriately for the first Olympics staged in China, Phelps and Bolt represented the Yin and Yang of great champions — the swimmer and the runner, water and earth, a diet of 12,000 calories a day versus chicken nuggets for breakfast. Phelps lit up the Games by day (thanks to NBC’s insistence on morning finals in the pool) and Bolt by night.

But where Phelps’ triumphant march was expected, even demanded (NBC was counting on it), Bolt’s sudden rise to superstardom was a joyous gift for his troubled sport, beset by doping scandals which had tarnished its credibility along with some once-great names.

It takes a huge talent to hold 90,000 people in thrall but Bolt captured them at the Bird’s Nest from the moment he dashed down the straight to win the 100m in a world record 9.69sec, becoming the fastest man on the planet, despite a side-stepping celebration over the last 20m that may have cost him up to 0.1sec.

But Bolt’s Calypso rhythm and youthful exuberance brought much-needed star quality to the main stadium.

The only time that 21-year-old Bolt was deadly serious was when he stepped onto the blocks for the 200m final. A 200m specialist as a junior competitor, he was desperate to break his hero Michael Johnson’s lauded world record of 19.32sec from Atlanta in 1996.

Bolt ran the half-lap with his eyes only on that mark and every fast-twitch fibre straining forward, stopping the clock in an astonishing 19.30sec.

And he wasn’t finished there. The showman of the Games then combined with former world 100m record-holder Asafa Powell and his Jamaican team-mates to set a third world record in the 4×100m relay.

His name was attached to three of the five world records to fall at the Bird’s Nest.

If Bolt was the king of the track, Russia’s Yelena Isinbayeva was the queen of the air, after she soared to a world record of 5.05m in the pole vault to clinch her second successive Olympic gold medal.

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Usain Bolt let those long legs loose at the Bird’s Nest, and he left Beijing with three Olympic gold medals, three world records and hundreds of millions of new fans around the world.

Virtually unknown at the start of the year, the Jamaican sprinter was the star of the track in 2008, first setting a world record in the 100 meters at the end of May and then lowering the mark to 9.69 seconds at the Olympics. A few days later, he set a 200 record of 19.30, taking two hundredths of a second off the mark set by Michael Johnson at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

To cap it off, the 1.96-meter (6-foot-5) Bolt helped Jamaica win gold in the 4×100 relay — again in world-record time.

“I’m Lightning Bolt. I’m not Flash Gordon or anybody,” Bolt said after the 200. “My name is Lightning Bolt.”

Two of the greatest distance runners of all time also had stellar years, with Kenenisa Bekele winning both the 5,000 and 10,000 at the Olympics. In the longer race, the Ethiopian great beat 1996 and 2000 Olympic 10,000 champion Haile Gebrselassie, who only competed in that event after opting out of the marathon because of pollution fears.

But Gebrselassie’s sixth-place finish in Beijing didn’t stop him from breaking his own world record in the marathon, lowering that mark to 2:03:59 in Berlin in September.

“I knew I can do something here in Berlin because since I started running, Berlin is my lucky city,” said Gebrselassie, a three-time Berlin Marathon champion who had set the previous world record at the race in 2007.

In women’s competition, Yelena Isinbayeva was undefeated outdoors in 2008, defending her Olympic pole vault title in Beijing with one of her four world records this year — three outside and one inside.

“I love to be alone at the top,” Isinbayeva said after raising the outdoor world record to 5.05 meters in Beijing.

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GREECE’S former 400m hurdles Olympic champion Fani Halkia has been handed a two year ban for her positive dope test at the Beijing Games, the Greek athletics federation said.

The federation confirmed a decision by its judicial committee to punish the former star.

A gold medallist at Athens in 2004 Halkia was expelled from the Beijing Olympics after testing positive for the banned steroid Methyltrienolone.

Halkia, her coach and two other athletes who failed tests also face maximum sentences of five years in prison in Greece over their respective cases.

The four suspects deny any wrongdoing and Halkia claims she was the victim of sabotage.

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Olympic champion Christine Ohuruogu was named athlete of the year by the British Olympic Association on Saturday, a year after she overturned the organization’s ban for a doping violation.

The 24-year-old Londoner beat favourite Sanya Richards at August’s Beijing Games to become Britain’s first ever female Olympic gold medallist over 400 metres.

Ohuruogu was banned for 12 months after missing three out-of-competition doping tests from October 2005 to July 2006, and had to win a court battle to overturn her lifetime BOA ban.

UK Athletics had said she was guilty of a technical offence and welcomed her onto the Beijing team, but Ohuruogu’s achievements have consistently been overshadowed.

She won the world championship in Osaka, Japan, in August 2007 barely weeks after returning to competition.

source: google.com

taly’s triumphant Olympic fencers are using their fighting skills to stay in the limelight and promote their sport now that interest has waned after the Beijing Games.

The fencing team drew wide attention after it brought home two individual gold, two individual bronze and three team bronze medals.

The swashbucklers have used media appearances at home to great effect, knowing that soon the focus will return to more traditionally popular sports like soccer and auto racing.

Diego Confalonieri, who won bronze in the team épée, wants to avoid the fate of most smaller Olympic sports that must wait until the 2012 Games in London for another 15 minutes of fame.

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The Beijing Olympics were an “indisputable success” that brought change to China in areas as diverse as press freedom, the environment and public health, according to an assessment released by the International Olympic Committee that activists criticized as ignoring human rights violations that occurred during the Games.

The review, released by the Olympic committee during meetings in London this week, credited the Beijing Games with attracting broader participation and larger audiences than any other Olympics.

“The Games expanded and strengthened the Olympic movement by advancing the universality of sport,” the three-page fact sheet said. “They also brought many tangible and intangible benefits to China, especially in terms of public infrastructure improvements. While some of the positive benefits were immediately apparent, others will emerge with time.”

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The International Olympic Committee is seeking to improve the ticketing system for upcoming Games in Vancouver and London to avoid the problem of empty seats that occurred in Beijing this year.

The IOC and London organizers, meanwhile, expressed confidence Thursday that the 2012 Olympics will be a success despite the global economic downturn. And London’s Olympic chief said the Games will be “secure” from terrorism.

Olympic officials concluded weeklong meetings aimed at passing on lessons learned from the Beijing Games, which the IOC described as “an indisputable success” that could lead to further social, economic and political progress in China.

The Beijing review was meant to transfer knowledge to upcoming host cities, particularly London for 2012. Organizers of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games and 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, also took part. So did officials from the four cities bidding for the 2016 Summer Games: Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

“The 2008 Games set new standards for organization, venues and athletic performances, but we can always improve,” IOC Olympic Games executive director Gilbert Felli said. “I’m confident that the London organizers will host a first class event with a uniquely British atmosphere.”

Ticketing and empty seats were singled out as key issues. While tickets were sold out in Beijing, there were still vacant seats at some of the venues, Felli said.

He said this may have been because ticket-holders did not stay at the venues for long or back-to-back sessions. Also, some tickets were allocated to groups across China which may not have shown up, he said.

Some tickets also ended up on the black market, while fake tickets were sold to unsuspecting fans in online scams.

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The Beijing Olympics were an “indisputable success” that brought change to China in areas as diverse as press freedom, the environment and public health, according to an assessment released by the International Olympic Committee this week that activists criticized as ignoring human-rights violations that occurred during the Games.
The review, released by the Olympic committee during meetings in London this week, credited the Beijing Games with attracting broader participation and larger audiences than any other Olympics in history.

“The Games expanded and strengthened the Olympic Movement by advancing the universality of sport,” according to the three-page fact sheet. “They also brought many tangible and intangible benefits to China, especially in terms of public infrastructure improvements. While some of the positive benefits were immediately apparent, others will emerge with time.”

The document praised the Beijing organizers’ nearly flawless execution of the Games, detailing the successful coordination of half a million volunteers and maintenance of a complex transportation and security system. It noted that the media facilities were “widely praised as the best ever,” and that the Chinese government has indefinitely reduced restrictions on foreign media who report in the country.

But it made no mention of several highly publicized crackdowns on would-be protestors, or of Internet censorship at the media center and harassment of foreign journalists during the Games.

“I think the I.O.C.’s fact sheet is missing a lot of salient facts,” said Minky Worden, media director for Human Rights Watch. “What is missing in this document is the extent to which the International Olympic Committee lowered its standards on human rights around the Beijing Olympic Games.”

Thousands of people were evicted from their homes to make way for construction of Olympic venues, and some activists were detained before the Games began. Although authorities set up “protest zones” during the Olympics, no demonstrations took place, and several people who applied for protest permits were detained, including two elderly women who were initially sentenced to up to a year of “re-education through labor.” The sentence was later rescinded.

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THE high command of the Olympic movement is to meet in London to discuss what lessons can be learned from the Beijing Games.

Up to 70 VIPs will attend the “Beijing debrief” this month in a week-long summit which will begin with a lecture by Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee.

Mr Rogge is expected to tackle the issue of how the scale of the Olympic Games can be adapted to cope with a worldwide recession. Last month he sparked a row when he said that to avoid the main 2012 stadium becoming a “white elephant” after the Games, the athletics track could be removed. Officials from the Beijing Games organising committee, Bocog, will brief their London counterparts on issues ranging from transport, catering and security. Bocog earned praise for the organisation of the Games and the sports venues, especially the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube.

However, the London organising committee, Locog, will be keen to improve on public catering at venues and the poor atmosphere in the Beijing Olympic Green.

Meetings will be led by Hein Verbruggen, head of the IOC’s team overseeing the Beijing Games, and IOC chief technocrat Gilbert Felli.

Future Winter Olympics hosts Vancouver and Sochi will also attend, as will cities bidding to host the 2016 Games – Rio, Madrid, Chicago and Tokyo – who will also be given a tour of the Olympic Park. They will be discreetly trying to lobby the dozen IOC members in attendance, ahead of the 2016 vote next year in Copenhagen.

?BORIS Johnson has rejected claims that Olympic chiefs will struggle to put on the 2012 Games because of the financial downturn.

“Not only can we cope, but we can do a fantastic job,” he insisted, adding that this would be done within the £9.3 billion budget.

However, the Mayor admitted that Games organisers may have to attract more foreign investment, particularly from China, as a result.

The Standard reported last month that he was holding talks with some of China’s leading universities to establish a new campus in the Olympic Park.

Mr Johnson’s remarks on Channel 4 News come after Olympics minister Tessa Jowell said the Government would not have bid for the Games if it had known a recession was on its way.

source: thisislondon.co.uk

Stocks markets and oil prices may dip and dive, but Olympic organizers with preparations under way for three games in the next six years aren’t breaking a sweat.

The reasons? Time and television money. The global economic downturn has squeezed private financing for venues that will be a part of London’s 2012 Summer Games and Sochi’s 2014 winter edition, but with brisk ticket sales for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and most of the sponsors locked in, the IOC can afford to hold off making new deals for television rights and sponsorships.

“All of us feel this,” said Gerhard Heiberg, head of the International Olympic Committee’s marketing commission. “Of course, this has an impact for everyone in the world. It never comes at a convenient time. But we don’t feel we are affected too much in general. Things are moving everywhere in the right direction. Some things may take longer than originally hoped.”

The financial pinch comes as IOC president Jacques Rogge seeks another term that will keep him in office until 2013. He says the committee is closely monitoring the financial situation.

“It would be naive and shortsighted to say that nothing will happen,” Rogge said last week, confirming his plans to seek re-election next October, when he is expected to be unopposed. “Yes, the situation is so volatile that it is too soon to draw conclusions.”

Rogge said the Olympic movement is in “excellent financial health.” Total Olympic TV and sponsorship revenues for the 2005-08 cycle – covering the 2006 Turin Winter Games and 2008 Beijing Olympics – totalled about US$3.5 billion.

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With Barack Obama in the White House, baseball officials think their sport could have a better chance of getting back into the Olympics.

“If the perception internationally of the United States improves by virtue of his election, then I think the U.S. stature in international sport of every type will be enhanced,” San Diego Padres chief executive officer Sandy Alderson said Wednesday at the general managers’ meetings. “I don’t think the United States has the international stature in sport that it once had.”

Baseball was added as a demonstration sport in 1984 and 1988, then was a medal sport starting in 1992. The International Olympic Committee voted in July 2005 to drop baseball and softball following the 2008 Beijing Games. When a vote for reinstatement took place the following February, baseball lost 46-42 and softball failed 47-43.

At the time, International Softball Federation president Don Porter said: “I think anti-Americanism was a factor.” Softball was added for the 1996 Atlanta Games.

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IOC president Jacques Rogge foresees no immediate threat to the Olympics from the global financial crisis and says the fight against doping will be a key priority for a second term in office.

Rogge, a 66-year-old Belgian who has led the International Olympic Committee since 2001, notified members last Friday that he will seek re-election next October for a final four-year term that will take him to 2013.

He spoke in a telephone interview with The Associated Press ahead of a news conference in Brussels, Belgium, on Thursday where he publicly announced his candidacy for another term at the helm of the IOC.

No challengers are expected and Rogge’s re-election is considered a formality at the October 2009 assembly in Copenhagen, Denmark.

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GE, a worldwide partner of the Olympic Games, is kicking off a number of new marketing and sales efforts in advance of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games and London 2012 Olympic Games.
For the London 2012 Olympic Games, GE has launched a ground-breaking moving image campaign on the side of London taxi cabs featuring a technique known as ‘motion lenticular technology’, never before used on the exterior of a taxi cab. The campaign, which runs until February 2009, features 300 London cabs displaying the new Olympic Games designs as side panels. Two creative executions have been developed – one that depicts an Olympic hurdler, the other a cyclist. As a result of the printing technology used, as the cab moves along the streets, the images appear to be animated.

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Nearly one in 10 Olympians were treated for injuries at the Beijing Games, the IOC said yesterday.

More than half of all the 1,055 athletes hurt had leg and foot problems and at least 100 suffered head injuries, according to figures based on medical reports from 92 of the national teams competing.
Almost three-quarters of all injuries were sustained in competition, and the most common were thigh strains and ankle sprains.
The sports most dangerous to Olympians’ health were boxing, football, handball, hockey, taekwondo and weightlifting. Each reported injuries to around one in seven athletes.
Four sports reported that none of its athletes lost training or competition time: flatwater canoeing, diving, sailing and synchronised swimming.
An International Olympic Committee team of medical experts recorded and analysed injuries in detail at Beijing for the first time at a Summer or Winter Games.
A detailed report will be published in a sports medical journal and distributed to all national teams.

source: jamaicaobserver.com

Cheating athletes who evaded detection during the Olympic Games in Beijing will only know if they got away with it in eight years’ time.
Jacques Rogge, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee, which has a statute of limitations on results of eight years, said that the urine and blood samples taken from competitors in Beijing can be repeatedly tested until 2016 as scientists develop new methods of analysis.
The process has already started, with 5,000 samples shipped from Beijing to Lausanne so that they can be tested for Continuous Erythropoiesis Receptor Activator, or Cera, a new generation of the blood-booster drug, EPO discovered recently in the urine of cyclists on this summer’s Tour de France.
Rogge said: “This is the first stage of retroactive testing.
“We are going to keep, to preserve the urine and the blood for eight years.

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Peter Ueberroth took a swipe at international officials critical of the money the U.S. Olympic Committee receives, setting up some possibly uncomfortable moments for the Chicago group trying to land the 2016 Games.
“Who pays the bill for the world Olympic movement?” Ueberroth said Saturday in his final speech as USOC chairman. “Make no mistake about it. Starting in 1988, U.S. corporations have paid 60 percent of all the money, period. Be sure you all understand that. The rest of the world pays 40 percent. It’s pretty simple math.”
It was Ueberroth’s first extensive response to comments made by European IOC members Denis Oswald and Hein Verbruggen, who said earlier this year that the amount of money the USOC received was not morally acceptable and called for the revenue-sharing deal to be revisited.
As part of a long-standing deal with the International Olympic Committee, the USOC receives about 13 percent of U.S. TV rights fees and 20 percent of global marketing revenues. That added up to about $300 million in the four-year period ending in 2008.

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