Olympic Times – Sports Daily

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.

Read the rest of this entry…

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.

Read the rest of this entry…

The families of British athletes competing at the London Olympics will be guaranteed tickets after a landmark agreement yesterday between Games organisers and the British Olympic Association (BOA).

Further discussions will be held in the next fortnight on the number to be provided from the national allocation in an effort to avoid forcing the parents and siblings of Olympic competitors on to the black market.

The agreement, struck on the eve of completion of the first official Games venue in Weymouth today, is a response to problems over ticket allocation in China. The squeeze on supply led the parents of Rebecca Adlington, the double Olympic swimming champion, to a rogue website where they were conned out of £1,100. Five people behind the widespread scam were arrested this week by serious fraud investigators.

The small velodrome meant that key members of the British cycling set-up could not get access; the parents of Chris Hoy, the triple gold medal-winner, watched their son perform only after receiving last-minute tickets from a sponsor. The demand in London is expected to be even greater.
“Our first priority is an allocation of tickets to the athletes,” Colin Moynihan, the BOA chairman, said. “The principle has been agreed. The athletes have given their lives to be members of Team GB and their family should be given the opportunity of enjoying the Games around them.” The ticketing issue was hotly discussed at a formal Beijing debrief in London this week. The organisers want to avoid an embarrassing repeat of empty seats in Beijing that occurred despite its billing as the first sold-out Games.

Read the rest of this entry…

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.”

Read the rest of this entry…

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.

Read the rest of this entry…

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.

Read the rest of this entry…

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

Even with big, mythological adjectives like “titanic”, “gargantuan”, or “colossal” placed in front of it, the phrase “fiscal stimulus package” does not begin to explain what happened in Beijing on Sunday night.

“Olympic” comes closest. This was truly the Beijing Games of fiscal stimulus packages: impressive, suppressive and excessive.

Common-or-garden stimulus packages are what governments in places like Britain, South Korea and Japan do to stimulate their economies. China’s $586 billion splurge is something entirely different. If Washington directed an equivalent percentage of its GDP at a stimulus package, it would be worth more than $2.2 trillion, and would consequently be utterly terrifying.

And, on closer inspection, China’s could indeed be something scarier than just a big stimulus package. Neatly disguised as the Kool-Aid that everyone else is drinking at the moment, Beijing’s offering is actually a knockout cocktail of political manifesto, Great Game diplomacy and domestic Riot Act.
There are three vital questions which that volume of money raises – beyond the technically critical issue of precisely where, and in what order, the money will be spent. The details were tantalisingly vague, and given the suspicion that Beijing may be double-counting investment plans already announced, economists are already at odds over how close the package’s actual financial impact will be, compared with its dramatic face value.

Read the rest of this entry…

The IOC are growing increasingly frustrated at Britain’s refusal to introduce legislation to outlaw the possession, supply and distribution of performance-enhancing drugs.

Their stance leaves them out of step with other European countries such as Sweden, France, Italy, Greece and Germany where anti-doping laws mean athletes and their suppliers can go to jail.

Arne Ljungqvist, the chairman of the IOC’s medical commission, said he would be pressing for a change in the British law, which would be an important legacy of the 2012 Olympics.

The subject will be raised by the IOC when Olympic host and bidding cities gather in London later this month for a post-Beijing debrief.

The IOC are considering making it a condition of bidding for future Olympic Games that candidate countries have anti-doping laws. In the meantime, just as the Chinese authorities were persuaded to introduce new legislation in the run-up to this summer’s Games, Britain will be under pressure to fall into line.

Ljungqvist, who is also a board member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said: “I think legislation is very important that criminalises certain offences as detailed in the WADA code because it allows public authorities to intervene where we cannot.

“We as sports authorities have our limited possibilities regulated by our code. We can do testing but we cannot do searches.”

Read the rest of this entry…

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.

Read the rest of this entry…

In a highly unusual show of discord between Olympic leaders, IAAF chief Lamine Diack sharply criticized IOC president Jacques Rogge on Friday for displaying “a lack of respect” for track and field.

Diack, president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, issued a strongly worded statement vowing to fight for the “rightful place of athletics at the summer Olympic Games.”

He assailed the International Olympic Committee president for criticizing Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt’s celebrations in Beijing and for suggesting the Olympic track in London could be ripped up after the 2012 Games.

“Destroying the track would be totally unacceptable,” Diack said.

Diack is scheduled to meet with Rogge in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Nov. 17.

Diack took issue with Rogge for accusing Bolt of excessive showboating and showing a lack of respect to other sprinters after his world-record performances in the 100 and 200 meters.

Read the rest of this entry…

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.

Read the rest of this entry…

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.

Read the rest of this entry…

In the wake of Beijing’s Olympics, London is preparing for what will be the most demanding multimedia Olympics ever in 2012.

The U.K.’s home broadcaster, the BBC, and operator BT are among the many stakeholders figuring out how to provide for a record amount of coverage for the Games as well as build a massive IP (Internet Protocol) network to support broadcasters and journalists from around the world.

The BBC has seen exponential growth in interest in Web-based Olympics coverage, said Ben Gallop, head of interactive for BBC Sport. Gallop was one of several presenters at a forum on Thursday discussing media technology for the 2012 Olympics.

Read the rest of this entry…

A former Beijing official who oversaw citywide construction projects for this year’s Olympic Games has been given a suspended death sentence for corruption in a case that involved bribery and lavish living, state news outlets reported on Sunday.
Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that the sentence, suspended for two years, meant that if the defendant “shows good behavior, his sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment.”

The official, Liu Zhihua, 59, once exercised immense power as Beijing’s vice mayor and chief director of the agency that supervised construction projects, including the citywide makeover to prepare for the Games.

But in June 2006, Mr. Liu was stripped of his post after being linked to a bribery scandal. He was expelled from the governing Communist Party six months later.

Mr. Liu’s case was a major embarrassment to the party. Corruption is endemic, but party leaders had pledged that the $43 billion preparations for the Games would be the “cleanest in history.”

Mr. Liu’s case was doubly upsetting because of revelations of his opulent lifestyle, including expensive villas and mistresses provided by developers seeking his favor.

On Sunday, Xinhua said Mr. Liu had taken roughly $1 million in bribes during his tenure as vice mayor and as overseer of construction for a scientific research park in the city’s university district from 1999 to 2006.

The court found that Mr. Liu and a mistress had kept the money, Xinhua said, adding, “Liu abused his power to get contract projects, loans and offer promotions for others in exchange for profits.”

After his arrest in 2006, reports in Hong Kong’s news media portrayed Mr. Liu as having spent many weekends at luxurious villas in the mountains north of Beijing.

The South China Morning Post, an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, reported that Mr. Liu had used a suburban compound called Xanadu that was “full of luxury villas belonging to senior Communist Party officials and rich business figures.”

His defense lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said Mr. Liu had not decided whether to appeal his conviction.

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

All that gossip about gymnast Nastia Liukin, the all-around gold medalist, appearing on “Gossip Girl” turned out not to be mere gossip at all.

After a chance meeting with the show’s producers, she was asked to make an appearance on the popular show. She says it’s one of the coolest things that’s come her way since she won the Olympic gold medal in Beijing.

Yesterday, she was honored as the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Sportswoman of the Year for 2008.

It seems like he’s off to a faster start on the Mary Lou Retton track than Carly Patterson was after winning the all-around title at the Athens Olympics.

source: latimes.com