Olympic Times – Sports Daily

World champion Mao Asada‘s skill with the triple axel earned her a victory over longtime rival Kim Yu-na at the Grand Prix of Figure Skating finals on Saturday.

Jeremy Abbott of the United States won after hitting every jump in the free skate.

Asada’s triple axels — two launched at the start of her free skate_ proved decisive as she won with a total of 188.55 points, just 2.2 ahead of South Korea’s Kim at the Goyang Ice Arena north of Seoul.

“I am happy that I could land two triple axels in my program and that I was able to win here in Korea,” Asada said. “It is really special.”

It was a particularly satisfying victory for Asada of Japan, who had finished second to Kim at the last two Grand Prix finals.

Abbott breezed past Takahiko Kozuka of Japan for gold in his first Grand Prix final. Abbott earned 237.72 points, while Kozuka had 224.63.

Ice dancing world champions Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder capped off a victorious Grand Prix season with gold, and Pang Qing and Tong Jian of China rallied to win the pairs title.

But it was the showdown between Kim and Asada, rivals since their days as juniors, that took center stage at the sellout event. Even South Korea Prime Minister Han Seung-soo was in the audience.

Kim, the world bronze medalist, had won her last five consecutive Grand Prix series events. Asada, the reigning world champion, won the NHK Trophy but the finals title had eluded her.

Kim admitted to nerves Friday but pulled off a narrow, half-point lead over Asada in the short program. Fans showed their love for “Queen Yu-na” by throwing more than 550 stuffed animals and 500 flowers onto the rink, organizers said.

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GOYANG, South Korea : South Korean starlet Kim Yu-Na took first place in the ladies short programme at the ISU Grand Prix Friday, held in Goyang on the outskirts of Seoul.

In front of a huge home crowd, Kim scored 65.94 points to take top ranking despite making one mistake in her routine.

After nailing her opening jump combination of triple flip and triple toeloop, she botched the takeoff on her triple lutz, managing only a single rotation in the air.

A solid skate in the remainder of her routine enabled Kim to narrowly edge her Japanese rival Mao Asada, who is second at 65.38 points.

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Beijing has started selling souvenir sets of left-over grass and steel from its famed Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium for 2,900 yuan (420 dollars) each, Chinese media reported Thursday.

The packs include grass cut on the night of the Games’ closing ceremony, preserved in a clear box, and model Olympic torches made of steel that was not used for construction of the National Stadium, the Beijing News said.

There are 10,000 souvenir sets available for sale inside the Bird’s Nest, as well as various department stores around Beijing and online, the report said.

The Bird’s Nest, which seats 91,000 people, became the symbol of the Games held in August in China’s capital, attracting worldwide attention for its striking design of interlocking steel girders.

It hosted the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, as well as athletics competition and football final.

It has since proved a hit with tourists, attracting 60,000 visitors on its October 1 opening day, and thousands of people every day since.

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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.

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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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Japan’s Fumie Suguri took the women’s lead Friday at the Cup of Russia with a short program that was confident and precise, if short on adventure.

Suguri, who took silver at Skate Canada, is in line for a slot in the Grand Prix final if she gains a gold or silver in Moscow, the fifth of six Grand Prix series competitions. With a score of 58.30 points, she edged Carolina Kostner of Italy, the world silver medalist, and American Rachael Flatt at Moscow’s Megasport Arena.

In a disappointing performance, 2006 world champion Kimmie Meissner was eighth.

Suguri nailed all her jumps, with the only flaw a bit of apparent hesitation before her triple flip. She took fewer risks than Kostner or Flatt, essaying only a triple-double combination and front-loading all her jumps into the start of her program to “Fanfan” by Nicolas Jorelle.

Kostner tried a triple-triple, but put a hand down on the second jump, then fell on a triple lutz. But her drama and elegance won her the highest artistic marks of all the women.

Flatt stepped out of the first part of her triple-triple and only doubled the toe loop jump when she tried to add it on to her ensuing triple lutz.

But she held back a double axel until more than two minutes into the program, and got the second-highest technical marks.

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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

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.

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The Beijing Olympics may have ended in August, but the Games continue to play out in U.S. courts.
Claiming the company reneged on tens of thousands of dollars in payments for fulfilling orders, Texas ticket broker Andrew Hentrich, owner of the Austin Ticket Company, is suing RazorGator for alleged breach of contract.
RazorGator, the nation’s sixth-largest secondary ticket company according to TicketNews, contracted with Hentrich’s firm to fill hundreds of orders customers placed with RazorGator for hard-to-get Olympics tickets, which Hentrich successfully did.
But, RazorGator has yet to compensate Hentrich.
According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Austin, TX, “Defendant [RazorGator] would pay plantiff [Austin Ticket Co.] 50% of all net revenues received by the Company arising out of the Company’s sales of Tickets to the 2008 Summer Olympics in China and reimburse plaintiff for all reasonable expenses incurred in connection with his performance. Plaintiff has performed its contractual obligations. Defendant, however, has not performed its contractual obligations. Specifically, defendant has not reimbursed plaintiff for the reasonable expenses incurred as a result of the contract. Defendant’s nonperformance constitutes a breach of the parties’ agreement.”

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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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NBA commissioner David Stern said Sunday the league likely would play regular-season games in London before the British capital hosts the 2012 Olympics.
Stern, however, also said the possibility of taking meaningful games to Europe was nowhere near a done deal.
“Although we have no plans on the drawing board, it has been suggested to us that we should schedule in the next three years or so some regular-season games here – more than just one – on some regular basis,” Stern said before the New Jersey Nets-Miami Heat pre-season game at the O2 Arena. “It’s fair to say that we’ll see a minimum of one and possibly more regular-season games by 2012.”
Stern sees the Olympics as a springboard to increasing the NBA’s marketability in Britain, which is one of the richest countries in the world.
Dwyane Wade, possibly the most recognized player on the court, said he enjoyed the energy in the building during Sunday’s pre-season game.
“We don’t really grow up thinking that people will one day know us worldwide,” said Wade, who scored 18 points for the Heat in the 94-92 loss to the Nets. “It’s a great feeling.”

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London Games will be much more fun than those in Beijing, says London mayor

Boris Johnson said today that the 2012 Olympics would be “much, much more fun” than the Beijing Games as he unveiled a vision of the “party atmosphere” they could bring to London.

Giving evidence to a committee of MPs, the London mayor suggested that visitors could be issued with BlackBerry-style gadgets to help them follow events.

And he also insisted that the cost of the Games would not rise above the £9.3bn ceiling set on the budget, even with economic conditions worsening.

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At its first hearing since the Beijing Olympics, Johnson told the Commons culture committee that the event in China was “fantastic” but that he wanted the London Games to excel in a different way.

The 2012 Olympics would be “more friendly, more intimate”, he said. The venues would be “cosier”.

“We can produce a Games that’s just as good, if not better, without spending all that money,” said Johnson, referring to the £20bn cost of the Chinese Olympics.

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China knew about the contamination of milk products months ago but covered the scandal up to prevent it tarnishing the Beijing Olympics, according to journalists, rights groups and media critics.

The crisis broke in mid-September, a month after the Olympics, but several Chinese reporters had long known about babies being hospitalised after drinking tainted milk, yet were muzzled by the authorities, the critics say.

An editor at a respected southern China newspaper said that as early as July one of his reporters was investigating how milk powder might have been to blame for children developing kidney stones and falling seriously sick.

“As a news editor, I was deeply concerned because I sensed that this was going to be a huge public health disaster,” Southern Weekend news editor Fu Jianfeng said on his blog.

“But I could not send any reporters out to investigate. Therefore, I harboured a deep sense of guilt and defeat at the time.”

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Michael Phelps who claimed a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympic Games said it was harder for him to learn Chinese than to win swimming races.
Before the American came to China for the 2008 Games he seriously took a few Chinese lessons. A popular online video shows how hard he tries to imitate the voice of a Chinese learning multimedia software in saying such basic words as “guo zhi” (juice), “nan hai’er” (boy) and “nu hai’er” (girl).
But still, the 23-year-old rated his Chinese language studies as the most difficult thing he had tried in his life. “Learning Mandarin is even harder than winning eight gold medals in the pool.”
In primary school Phelps took French and German courses, but the swimming ace said, “all the words, characters and pronunciations in Mandarin are so different. All of them are hard to manage.”
He was not the only star athlete trying to learn some Chinese language and culture. When gymnast Nastia Liukin arrived back home in Dallas, Texas, with five medals around her neck, the Russian-born blonde appeared in front of her reception wearing a black T-shirt with two big Chinese characters “Beijing” in the front. (blog)
“The Beijing Olympics have brought world attention to the Chinese civilization and further enhanced the utility of the Chinese language worldwide,” said Zhao Guocheng, the Office of Chinese Language Council International (OCLCI) deputy director general.

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Chinese Olympians auctioned off everything from swimsuits to ping-pong paddles in Beijing last night in a benefit for Sichuan province, amid calls to turn the nation’s attention back to the quake-stricken region after the distraction of the Games.

Auction proceeds from the memorabilia offered by 23 Chinese athletes raised about four million yuan, or roughly $600,000, while the fundraising event raised 19 million yuan overall, according to the Chinese Athletes Fund, one of the organizers of the auction. About 80% of the money will be used to build youth sports facilities and infrastructure in Sichuan, the fund said, while the rest will be used provide training courses for retired athletes and coaches in fields including language skills, sports management and entrepreneurship education.

Guo Jingjing and her blue swimsuit

Female table tennis champion Zhang Yining’s ping pong paddle fetched 400,000 yuan, the highest price for an individual item. One sought-after item was the blue swimsuit worn by gold medal diver Guo Jingjing, which was sold for 300,000 yuan.

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A Chinese official has issued an unusual apology for sitting on a report of tainted milk during the Olympics, as China’s president said lessons must be learnt after 12 per cent of milk powder was found to be contaminated.

China’s worst-ever food scandal has already claimed the lives of four babies and sickened some 53,000 after they were fed the powder, made by the once-prestigious Sanlu Group. It had been laced with the industrial chemical melamine, used in plastics and glue.

The government has already said that the city authorities in Shijiazhuang, where Sanlu is based, had covered up the extent of the problem for more than a month while China was under the international spotlight during the Beijing Olympic Games.

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