Olympic Times – Sports Daily

The British Olympic Association and the London 2012 organising committee have agreed to fresh talks aimed at settling their bitter financial row.

The BOA has asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport to indefinitely suspend its request to rule on the division of any surplus from 2012.

The BBC has learned that the BOA has also requested a meeting with Locog.

Despite claims that they wouldn’t back down, Locog have agreed to the talks.

Lord Coe, chair of Locog (London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games), told the BBC “Clearly it is sensible not to have a dispute running on.”

“In fairness of course we don’t see this as a dispute any longer because the International Olympic Committee have made their judgement, the Government has made its judgement, the Mayor’s office has made it’s judgement and our position at Locog is really clear – that we are running hard to maintain a balanced budget but beyond that I’m not going to speculate. I will wait to see what the meeting holds at the end of the week.”

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Tokyo’s hopes of hosting the 2016 Olympics were shattered Friday as the Japanese capital was eliminated in the second round of voting by the International Olympic Committee.

Rio de Janeiro was named the winner of rights to stage the 2016 Games, beating Madrid in the final round of voting to become the first South American Olympic host. Rio had 66 votes to Madrid’s 32.

Chicago was eliminated in the first round of voting before Tokyo’s exit left the race down to the Rio and Madrid. Tokyo had 22 votes in the first round and 20 in the second.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama released a statement Saturday congratulating the Brazilian people on Rio de Janeiro’s win in a bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

‘‘I want to offer my heartfelt appreciation for the citizens of Tokyo and athletes,’’ said Tokyo Gov Shintaro Ishihara. ‘‘Let’s use this precious experience, while tackling environmental issues and contribute to the development of world cities. I pray for the success of the Games in Rio de Janeiro.’’

Under host city voting procedures, the city with the fewest number of votes in each successive round of balloting is eliminated until one city has reached a majority of the valid votes cast.

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The International Olympic Committee is no stranger to tough decisions. It took the risk of sending the games to Beijing and said “No” to New York in the aftermath of 9/11. Yet, despite all of that accumulated experience, some IOC members are struggling with their latest conundrum: choosing the Olympic host for 2016.
Just two days ahead of the vote, many were undecided.
And that means two things—it’s still too close to call between Rio de Janeiro, Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid and, for the next couple of days, IOC members are going to feel that they are the most popular people on the planet. Everyone in Copenhagen, where they are gathered, seemingly wants to be their new best friend.
Want to meet Michelle Obama? Not a problem if you’re an IOC member who needs a little pointer on which way to vote. The first lady, beating her husband to the Danish capital, has a two-room suite in the IOC hotel, with homely white leather furniture and an interactive table that, at the touch of a hand, gives bird’s eye views of how a Chicago Olympics might look.
Mrs Obama arrived Wednesday, two days ahead of the U.S. leader, and got straight to work on impressing IOC members.
“We’re not taking anything for granted, so I’m going to go talk to some voters,” she said.
IOC members who have been through this selection process repeatedly, previously sending the games to London, Beijing, Athens and Sydney, told The Associated Press that they could not remember a tougher choice. The AP canvassed the opinions of a dozen IOC members. With all four cities seen as amply capable, technically at least, of holding the Olympics, they said much will ride on how well or badly the cities make their case in final 45-minute presentations to the IOC on Friday before the successive rounds of secret balloting.
“I have two favorites,” IOC member Nicole Hoevertsz said. “It’s going to come down to the last, last presentation. It’s going to come down to the last minute.”
As tension mounted, so did tempers. Despite fresh IOC warnings that the cities should avoid criticizing their rivals, the Spanish Olympic Committee’s vice president, Jose Maria Odriozola, told the national Efe news agency that “Rio is the worst bid.”
Rio bid organizers said the criticism was “totally unacceptable” and formally complained to the IOC.
The outcome Friday could hinge on which cities are eliminated first and, if and when their favorites are knocked out, how IOC members subsequently line up behind the other candidates. That makes predicting a winner perilous and means that even members who say they already have made their choice are still worth lobbying.
“It is difficult enough to know where the first-round votes are going to go, so trying to imagine where the swinging votes are going to go is impossible,” said Spanish IOC member Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, whose father served as IOC president for 21 years.
“Events in the next 48 hours will decide the winner, because they will have a significant influence on the second- and third-round votes,” he said.
Samaranch said he believes nearly all the IOC’s 106 members already have a favorite. But IOC vice president Chiharu Igaya said “many” members are undecided.
Added British IOC member Craig Reedie: “This is really close. The closer it gets the more people will say, let me think about it. We all want to see the presentations. It’s what people see that will count. Decided? No, I haven’t actually. I’m getting close.”
Late, high-powered lobbying can be important—as then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, proved when London campaigned successfully for the 2012 Olympics. Blair traveled to Singapore ahead of the vote and spent two days lobbying members, inviting them to his hotel suite for one-on-one meetings.
Chicago tore a leaf from Blair’s playbook: Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett met with him last week to solicit his advice and get tips on navigating the IOC voting process.
But for the first time, there are no IOC executive board meetings in the days leading up to the vote. That means less opportunity for schmoozing.
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Six Olympic athletes are found positive for doping in retesting of Beijing samples, says the International Olympic Committee.
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The United States Olympic Committee reached a temporary compromise Friday with the International Olympic Committee in their heated dispute over revenue sharing.

Officials from both organizations met in Denver and agreed to wait until 2013 to discuss the issue. At that time, they will restart talks about redistributing the revenue from global sponsorship partners and television contracts. Any changes to the agreement would be instituted after 2020.

The U.S.O.C. now receives 20 percent of that sponsorship money and 12.75 percent of the TV money, but a group of angry I.O.C. and international sports federation officials had complained that the United States was receiving too much.

The groups were at loggerheads over the issue just as Chicago is trying to win votes to host the 2016 Olympics.

Bob Ctvrtlik, one of the main negotiators for the U.S.O.C., said he never thought the revenue-sharing dispute would affect Chicago’s chances. An I.O.C. evaluation committee is set to visit Chicago next week. The vote over which city — Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro or Tokyo — will win the Games is scheduled for Oct. 2.

“We never felt there was strong linkage,” Ctvrtlik said Friday, according to The Associated Press. “But in a room where one or two votes can make a difference, we’d rather have this issue behind us.”

But for the U.S.O.C., putting the revenue-sharing negotiations on hold comes at a cost: the I.O.C. said Friday that the U.S.O.C. has agreed to pay more of the fees related to the running of the Games, including fees related to doping programs and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Right now, the cost of the Olympics is sliced into thirds, with the I.O.C., the 35 Olympic federations and the 205 national Olympic committees paying the bill.

Jacques Rogge, the I.O.C.’s president, said he was not sure how much more the U.S.O.C. would have to pay, but said that it would be more than what he termed “rank and file” Olympic committees. He said the dollar amount would be discussed in the future.

Earlier this week, Hein Verbruggen, an honorary I.O.C. member and former president of the International Cycling Union, said the U.S.O.C. was greedy. The Association of Summer Olympic International Federations passed a non-binding resolution Tuesday urging the end of the U.S.O.C.’s current open-ended contract with the I.O.C. The association wanted to negotiate a new contract.

On Friday, Verbruggen was pleased.

“We’ve always said we just wanted to get them to the table, talking seriously,” he said, according to the A.P. “We’ve said ‘We need you guys at the table. It takes some heat off Chicago.’ ”

from: nytimes.com

Female ski jumpers continue to fight an uphill battle in their quest to compete in the Winter Olympic Games.
In an attempt to advance their cause, two elite jumpers — Katie Willis of Calgary and 2009 world champion Lindsey Van of Park City, Utah — appeared at a Wednesday media conference in Denver to urge International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge to meet with them.
“It was definitely frustrating,” Van said. “We didn’t get to meet with Rogge, but we got our idea across to the media that we want to meet and don’t really want to go ahead with a lawsuit, but that’s where we’re headed.”
Van and Willis are among 15 plaintiffs in a lawsuit that is to be heard April 20 in B.C. Supreme Court. The lawsuit was filed in May by female ski jumpers who maintain that they should be able to compete at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Male ski jumpers have been in the Olympics since the inaugural winter Games in 1924.
Rogge is in Denver for IOC executive board meetings, which began Wednesday and are to continue until Friday. The plaintiffs sent Rogge a registered letter last week, but he did not respond to their request for a meeting.
“That’s just how they work,” Van said. “The top guy in IOC is not going to make an appearance for some athletes that he doesn’t want to be in his Games, anyway.”
The International Ski Federation gave a resounding endorsement of female ski jumpers in 2006, voting 114-1 in favor of their inclusion in the 2010 Olympics. The IOC was not swayed, however, maintaining that ski jumping at the women’s level had not developed to the point where it was of Olympic caliber.
The lawsuit has been filed against the Vancouver Olympic Games Organizing Committee. The suit contends that the exclusion of women is discriminatory and in opposition to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“The reason it’s not (filed against) the IOC is very simple: Nobody has any authority over the IOC,” Women’s Ski Jumping USA president Deedee Corradini said Wednesday. “They can do whatever they want, so we had to look for another way to get this done.
“As our lawyers took a look at what our options were, VANOC, we feel, is the right place.
Our belief is VANOC can control whether the women jump or not. If this goes our way, VANOC is just going to have to tell the IOC, ‘The women have to jump. You can’t break the laws of Canada and we are subject to those laws.’ ”
Vancouver organizing officials contend they should not be the defendant because the IOC dictates the composition of the Winter Olympics. The IOC has not budged.
“If you have three medals, with 80 athletes competing on a regular basis internationally, the percentage of medal winners is extremely high,” Rogge told reporters on Feb. 28, 2008. “In any other sport, you are speaking about hundreds of thousands, if not tens of millions, of athletes at a very high level, competing for one single medal.
“We do not want the medals to be diluted and watered down. That is the bottom line.”
Corradini said there are close to 100 women from 18 countries competing at the elite level. A total of 166 women are registered as active jumpers with the International Ski Federation.
Since 1991 the IOC has demanded gender equity from any sport it adds.
However, ski jumping has been grandfathered, or “grandmothered” in this case. Ski jumping and Nordic combined (which includes ski jumping and cross-country skiing) are the only male-exclusive sports in the Winter Olympics.
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Willis, 17. “We’re doing whatever we can. We’ve gone through all the steps. This is the last step so hopefully this will be the thing we want.”
The first women’s ski jumping world championship was held Feb. 20 in Liberec, Czech Republic, with Van winning the gold medal.
The IOC has said it is amenable to adding women’s ski jumping for the 2014 Winter Olympics, earmarked for Sochi, Russia, providing its criteria can be met. Van is not prepared to wait that long.
“I need to get out and move on with my life if this isn’t going to happen,” the 24-year-old Van said. “I’m not going to wait for a bunch of old guys to decide my future when I can take it into my own hands and move on from ski jumping if it doesn’t happen now.”
For 2010, the women are asking for one event to be held on the normal hill in Whistler, B.C. The men’s event includes competition on the normal hill and large hill, as well as a team event.
Corradini — a former mayor of Salt Lake City — cannot understand why the IOC members are not open to that request.
“They would be heroes,” she said. “Everybody would shine. The lawsuit goes away. Why don’t they do something so simple?”

source: vancouversun.com

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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

Rosneft (ROSN.MM), Russia’s largest oil firm, pledged $180 million for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics on Tuesday, becoming the games’ third sponsor after the government scaled back spending on the event by 15 percent.
Rosneft will also build over 150 new gasoline stations ahead of the games, half of which will be spread across parts of Russia serving major highways.
Sergei Bogdanchikov, the head of the indebted state-controlled company, told a briefing the firm’s support would “increase the profitability of our company.”

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Last month state-controlled long-distance telephone company Rostelecom and MegaFon, the country’s third biggest mobile phone operator, pledged $260 million in sponsorship, plus a further $200 million to develop infrastructure in the region.
Rosneft’s pledge comes at a time when Russian natural resource firms are cash-strapped and cutting back production in response to the sharp drop in energy and commodity prices, Russia’s star assets.
“Even in a difficult economic situation, Russian businesses are not neglecting their social responsibility,” the head of Sochi 2014′s organising committee, Dmitry Chernyshenko, said in a statement.
Russia has pledged to spend $12 billion on developing the Olympics in Sochi, a resort on its Black Sea coast.
Winning the right to host the games is viewed by many as one of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s major achievements during his eight years as president.

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If Chicago is selected as the host city for the 2016 Olympic Games, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena could be one of the venues for the men’s and women’s soccer tournaments.
The stadium was one of six venues proposed by the Chicago bid committee when it submitted its canditature file to the International Olympic Committee.
The others are Minneapolis Stadium, Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey, Philadelphia Stadium, the Edwards Jones Dome in St. Louis and Landover Field in Maryland.
Chicago proposes staging the medal-round matches at Soldier Field.
The Rose Bowl was the site of the soccer final at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and also has staged the final of the World Cup in 1994 and the Women’s World Cup in 1999.

source: latimesblogs.latimes.com

Sport’s long-term popularity will suffer badly if governments redirect funds away from its grassroots during the global credit crunch, International Olympic Committee (IOC) chiefs warned on Friday.

IOC president Jacques Rogge said top-tier events like the Olympic Games and soccer’s World Cup were not suffering too much from the worst economic downturn in almost 80 years, though sports at local level were struggling to cope.

“If the financial crisis continues any longer than we expect … the popularity of sport will be severely damaged in the long term as grassroots and local games find it harder to survive,” Rogge told reporters in Brussels.

“I think the main place for the crisis is at grassroots level, the small clubs, national federations, some national Olympic committees. They say it’s getting extremely difficult to find sponsorships.”

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Is the Olympics sexist?

Tessa Jowell seems to think so. The Olympics minister has raised the spectre of “gender discrepancies” at the 2012 games in London, specifically the fact that men will compete in 164 events, compared with 124 for women. Perhaps predictably, the Daily Mail has already made a sneery reference to “the equality Olympics” and many have chosen to concentrate on the prospect of men adopting the only two all-female Olympic sports, synchronised swimming and rhythmic gymnastics (the one where you wear a leotard and throw hula-hoops in the air).

Jowell is of course thinking more of boxing, the only totally female-free Olympic sport, not to mention canoeing, cycling, rowing, shooting and wrestling, which offer fewer medal events for women for no apparent reason other than that’s the way it’s always been. After the 2008 games the cyclist Victoria Pendleton pointed out that while Chris Hoy was able to compete for three gold medals on the track, as a woman she got just the one shot. This seems both unfair and pointless. Women’s cycling is as much an elite sport as the men’s event, and its under-representation seems to be based solely in genteel – and largely historical – reservations about ladies going fast on bikes.

There is another side to this. Current estimates suggest there are no more than 60 female wrestlers in the whole of Britain. It’s hard to make much of a case here for instant elevation, particularly with professional sports such as darts and the now-demoted baseball lobbying for their own inclusion.

In any case, the makeup of the 2012 programme is a matter solely for the International Olympic Committee, an organisation that pursues its own labyrinthine agenda largely unhindered by the opinions of UK cabinet ministers. Plus, the IOC would no doubt point to the recent inclusions of the women’s pole vault (2000) and steeplechase (2008) as evidence of its own creeping progressiveness. But the issue has at least been decisively raised. And perhaps, also, it wouldn’t really be the London Olympics without a little fevered talk of political correctness gone mad.

source: guardian.co.uk

Nearly two-thirds of Chicago-area residents want the city to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, but most don’t want tax money to pay for it, a new Tribune poll found.
Yet many supporters—as well as a vast majority of those opposed to bringing the Games here—don’t buy the idea that private funds will cover nearly all the costs.
Mayor Richard Daley’s push for the Games was favored by 64 percent and opposed by 28 percent in the poll of registered voters from Chicago and the suburbs.
But 75 percent of all those surveyed said they were against the use of tax money to cover any financial shortfalls.
The international sporting event could boost the city’s struggling economy, improve its international reputation and help fix a troubled public transportation system, those surveyed said.
Asked about the biggest potential disadvantages, they cited taxpayer costs, congestion and security threats.
Rev. Louis Reeves, a pastor in Englewood who was one of those surveyed, said he supports the Olympics and hopes it will benefit low-income communities. But he is concerned about the costs.
“It would be great if private dollars could fund this event, but I just see our government looking to our public for assistance,” Reeves said.
The survey of 350 people, conducted Wednesday through Thursday, has an error margin of 5.2 percentage points.
The poll comes a week before Chicago and its rivals—Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro—must submit formal bids to the International Olympic Committee in Switzerland. The bids are due Thursday and international officials will choose a winner in October.

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With their venue plans now having received the necessary approvals from the 26 international sports federations, Chicago 2016 bid officials now can focus entirely on the issue that will have the greatest impact on their chances to win the Summer Games.

Money.

But the thorniest part of that issue is out of their hands.
It will be up to Chicago 2016 to do two things:

1.) Convince International Olympic Committee members that it has sufficient guarantees to cover operating expenses in case of possible shortfalls in projected revenues – especially if the recession drags on.

2.) Convince the same members, who will choose the 2016 host at an Oct. 2 vote in Denmark, that it can find developers willing to build a $1-billion Olympic Village just south of downtown Chicago.

Given the financial problems that have hit village plans for both the 2010 Winter Games and 2012 Summer Games, the IOC wants as much certainty as possible from all four candidates, despite – or because of – the global recession.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Olympic Committee must resolve the hot-button financial issue, the ongoing dispute over the USOC share of global sponsorship revenues and U.S. broadcast rights.
USOC chairman Larry Probst, who took over that position from Peter Ueberroth in October, traveled this week to Lausanne, Switzerland, to introduce himself personally to IOC president Jacques Rogge and officials of several international federations that also have headquarters in Lausanne.
The revenue issue apparently was not discussed during Probst’s trip, described as a “meet-and-greet” by someone familiar with its purpose.
Exactly what role Probst is playing in the interminable USOC-IOC negotiations on the matter is unclear.

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North Side resident John Berchem says Chicago’s Olympic bid will be worth it.
“The benefits to the city seem fabulous,” Berchem says. “Sure, it’s going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money. But, so what?”
South Side housing activist Ora Williams says she’s concerned neighborhood residents will be displaced by Olympic-related development projects.
Their comments came during an event yesterday at the Union League Club previewing the city’s Olympic bid book, which the Chicago 2016 committee will present to the International Olympic Committee on Feb. 12.
John Murray, vice president and chief of bid operations for Chicago 2016, presented an outline of Chicago’s strengths, including landscape, culture and people, and a look at the proposed locations for sporting venues and the Olympic Village. He also gave an overview of the benefits the games will bring to Chicago.
“It’s not about trying to out-do a city like Beijing,” Murray said, noting the Chinese capital’s preparation for the games last summer. “It’s about pointing the way to Chicago and putting our own stamp on the Olympic festival for the millions of people in the city and billions of people around the world.”
Details of how the city will deal with transit, housing and public safety were scarce during his presentation.
Some of the nearly 100 people in the audience asked questions about the Olympics’ impact on the city, particularly how the games will be paid for and their impact on Chicago taxpayers.

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Patricia Moreno beat one set of odds in being the first runner named as a torchbearer in the lead-up to the Vancouver Olympics. The next will be to show her friends they’re wrong when they tease her about falling down with the torch when the 18-year-old Vancouver high-school student takes centre stage with the Olympic flame as it makes its way toward the 2010 Games.

“I don’t know how intense it’s going to be that day,” Ms. Moreno said as she was introduced at a news conference in Toronto. “When the Coke team showed up at the recreation centre where I volunteer around Christmas, I was shaking.”

cristina del basso

Ms. Moreno was one of thousands of teens who applied online for a torchbearer job at the SoGo Active site, which the beverage maker maintains in partnership with the health-and-wellness organization ParticipAction. She was picked as the first runner to be introduced “because she embodied the infectious attitude of a young person who wanted to be active and make a difference in her community,” said David Moran, director of public affairs and communications for Coca-Cola Ltd.

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Could the Summer Olympics really come to the Twin Cities? There’s a new possibility that part of the 2016 games will be played here.
Chicago is one of four cities trying to get the Olympic bid in 2016 and if that happens, international soccer players may take the field at TCF Stadium.
The University of Minnesota confirms that the stadium committee is in negotiations with the Chicago Olympic group to host soccer matches should the windy city get the bid.
As far the economic impact of the matches, city officials said it’s still too early to say, but the worldwide publicity the games would bring is priceless
“The automatic impact is the international press that would come to Minneapolis-St. Paul area as we got with the Republican National Convention this summer—to show what a great market place we have. Any opportunities to have that is great for our cities,” Todd Kingel with the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce said.
He believes the proposed high-speed rail route between Chicago and Minneapolis is part of the reason the Chicago Olympic committee is considering an event site in the Twin Cities.
“There are moves in Congress now to be looking to add that additional infrastructure. So if those two could be linked together, I think it’s a great idea in some of their thinking,” Kingel explained.
Chicago is in the running with Tokyo, Madrid, and Rio de Janerio. The International Olympic Committee will make their decision in October.

source: kstp.com

The city of Madison and the surrounding area, home to three major bicycle companies, will serve as the cycling hub for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in the event Chicago is chosen as the host city.
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle Friday announced the selection by the Chicago 2016 Committee, which is organizing Chicago’s bid for the 2016 games.
“Not only is Madison a great place to live, it’s the nation’s premier area for bike riding,” Doyle said. “I am pleased that the Chicago 2016 Committee has chosen Madison to be its cycling hub and can’t wait for people from around the world to discover our beautiful region.”
To select an ideal venue, the bid committee worked collaboratively with cycling experts, Olympic athletes and the International Cycling Union (UCI) to select courses that are technically challenging and conducive to high-level competition.
The Wisconsin Road Cycling Course would begin on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, head east through downtown and feature several steep climbs near the finish line in Blue Mound State Park. The Wisconsin Mountain Bike circuit would take place in Tyrol Basin, a popular ski and snowboard destination in the winter that makes for a technically challenging course that meets the needs of the athletes while allowing for a great spectator experience during the Games, state officials said.
Doyle said Madison has one of the most extensive bike trail systems in the United States. Pacific Cycle, Trek and Saris, three of the cycling industry’s leading companies, are based in the Madison area.
Chicago is competing against Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid for the right to host the 2016 Olympics. The four candidate cities have until Feb. 12 to submit their plans to the International Olympic Committee. The final decision on the host city will be made by the full IOC membership on Oct. 2 during the 121st IOC Session in Copenhagen.

source. bizjournals.com