vancouver olympics Times – Sports Daily

The International Figure Skating Union’s Grand Prix Series enters its 15th season this weekend with its first event: The Trophee Eric Bompard Cachemire, in Paris. Competition starts Friday in competition, the first of six that will lead up to the Grand Prix Final in Tokyo in December and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. It will feature some interesting storylines.

Ladies’ Singles

Carolina Kostner

This event has perhaps the most stacked ladies’ field of the Grand Prix season. Two of figure skating’s greatest rivals will meet in this event as Korean World Champion Kim Yu-Na and 2008 World Champion and faces Grand Prix Final champ Mao Asada of Japan.

Kim, who has been training with Brian Orser in Toronto, blew away the field at the worlds in Los Angeles with a record score. She will show off new programs choreographed by David Wilson – George Gershwin’s “Piano Concerto in F Major” in the long program and a short program to a medley of music from “James Bond 007″, considered unusual music for figure skating.

The archrivals will also be joined by Italy’s Carolina Kostner, but the hotly-anticipated comeback of American Sasha Cohen has been iced as the 2006 Olympic silver medallist who is making a comeback, has pulled out of the competition after suffering an injured calf in practice. Japan’s Yukari Nakano and Caroline Zhang of the U.S. may also challenge. There are no Canadian women in this event.

Entries: Mao Asada (Japan), Candice Didier (France), Sasha Cohen, United States, Gwendoline Didier (France), Elene Gedevanishvili, (Georgia), Alexe Gilles (USA), Yu-Na Kim (South Korea), Kiira Korpi (Finland), Carolina Kostner (Italy), Yukari Nakano (Japan), Caroline Zhang (USA), Anna Jurkiewicz (Poland)

Men’s Singles

Brian Joubert, the 2007 world champion from France, launches his season in front of his home fans and will no doubt be trying to vindicate himself after finishing with what he considered a disappointing bronze medal at the 2009 Worlds.

A five-time world medallist known for his big jumps, Joubert is likely to be challenged in Paris by Nobunari Oda. The Japanese skater is in top form, winning last year’s NHK Trophy, after being banned for three months by his national federation in 2007 for drunk driving. Russia’s Sergei Voronov and Tomáš Verner of Czech Republic will also be in the running for spots on the podium. Vaughn Chipeur is the only Canadian man in the event as he begins his quest for the nation’s second spot at the Olympics.

Entries: Vaughn Chipeur (Canada), Chao Yang (China), Tomas Verner (Czech Republic), Brian Joubert (France), Yannick Ponsero (France), Alban Preaubert (France), Peter Liebers (Germany), Nobunari Oda (Japan), Sergei Voronov (Russia), Javier Fernandez (Spain), Ryan Bradley (USA), Adam Rippon (USA)

Pairs

Canadians Bryce Davison and Jessica Dubé will face the world’s finest pairs competition right off the bat in Paris when they return to the romantic style of skating that so suited them before their experimental season last year. They will meet world champions Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany, the reigning world champs. It’s the first of two meetings between the two teams during this Grand Prix season. The second will be at Skate Canada in Kitchener, Ont., in late November.

Russians Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov, coached by Olympic champ Oleg Vassiliev, may also figure into the podium.

Entries: Adeline Canac and Maximin Coia (France), Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir (USA), Huibo Dong and Yiming Wu (China), Jessica Dubé and Bryce Davison (Canada), Vanessa James and Yannick Bonheur (France), Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov (Russia), Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy, Germany

Ice Dance

Canadians Tessa Virtue, of London, Ont. and Scott Moir, of Ilderton, Ont. are making their return to the Grand Prix circuit after missing the series last season when Virtue had to have surgery on both of her shins. They returned late in the season to earn bronze at the world championships, and they feel confident now that they are the best ice dance team in the world. They will debut their highly-anticipated new programs: a flamenco original dance and a free dance to Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.

Virtue and Moir enter the competition as the clear favourite but can expect some good competition from the French team of Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat, Sinead and John Kerr of Great Britain, and Americans Emily Samuelson and Evan.

Entries: Zoé Blanc and Pierre-Loup Bouquet (France), Kristina Gorshkova and Vitali Butikov, (Russia), Madison Hubbell and Keiffer Hubbell (USA), Sinead Kerr and John Kerr (Great Britain), Kimberly Navarro and Brent Bommentre (USA), Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat (France), Ekaterina Rubleva and Ivan Shefer (Russia), Emily Samuelson and Evan Bates (USA), Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir (Canada)

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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LONDON (Reuters) – Andy Roddick won the shootout between former champions when he squeezed past Lleyton Hewitt 7-6 7-6 to reach the quarter-finals at Queen’s Club on Thursday.

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LONDON (Reuters) – Top seed Andy Murray quickly found his feet on grass at Queen’s Club on Wednesday, posting a 6-1 6-4 victory over Italy’s Andreas Seppi to reach the third round of the Wimbledon warm-up tournament.

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LONDON (Reuters) – Just when it seemed that it would be a waste of time for anyone other than Rafael Nadal to turn up at the French Open, Roger Federer cast a shadow over the Spaniard’s Roland Garros prospects.

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The NFL have held ’substantive talks’ with officials in London about holding the Super Bowl in the city.
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LONDON (Reuters) – If Roger Federer thinks becoming a father will have little impact on his goal of equaling and then breaking Pete Sampras’s record of 14 grand slam titles he might be in for a rude awakening.

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LONDON (Reuters) – The Ryder Cup captaincy is helping Colin Montgomerie relax on the golf course and he believes the new role will ensure his playing performances improve.

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American swimming star Michael Phelps says he expects to compete at the London 2012 Olympics, a month after threatening to retire.
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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

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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Relish the memories – 2008 was a special year for sport, and the outlook for the next few does not appear half so rosy.

Next year is thin in terms of big international events. The World Athletics Championships take place in Berlin, and it is left to rugby union – a minority sport globally – to provide another highlight when the British and Irish Lions tour South Africa, the world champions. And further ahead, the successor hosts of two of this year’s stellar events, the Olympic Games and the European Football Championships, have hard acts to follow, with fewer resources and the global economic crisis to combat.

The Beijing Olympics was the apex of 2008. China opened its doors to the world and demonstrated that it could organise a successful sporting extravaganza. It did so by hurling massive amounts of money and manpower at the Games, in a manner that perhaps only an authoritarian state could. The yin and yang nature of the event was symbolised by the happiness and pride of the Chinese people at hosting the world’s biggest sporting party on the one hand, and their government’s refusal to budge an inch over human rights on the other.

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London Mayor Boris Johnson has approached J Sainsbury Plc Chief Executive Officer Justin King about the possibility of King becoming Johnson’s main adviser on the London 2012 Olympics, the Financial Times reported, citing people close to the company.

King has not yet decided whether to accept the approach, the newspaper said, citing the people. The supermarket’s board may be sympathetic to the concept, the FT said.

source. bloomberg.com

The competition pool for a Chicago Olympics would last about as long as a swimming world record does these days.

Chicago 2016 organizers unveiled several venue changes Friday that they say will benefit athletes and the community, and make their bid more attractive in the highly competitive international field. In addition to moving the aquatic center and making the competition pool a temporary facility, the sailing, canoe/kayaking, track cycling and BMX cycling venues all will be moved under Chicago’s retooled bid plan.

“We worked very closely with international sports federations and national governing bodies,” said Doug Arnot, Chicago 2016’s operations chief. “This plan is better for sport, better for the games and, perhaps most importantly, better for Chicago’s youth sports legacy. This plan remains very financially responsible.”

The changes will add about 5% to the budget, which remains at $4.7 billion, Chicago 2016 chairman Patrick Ryan said. That’s a bargain compared with other Summer Games; London estimates its overall costs for the 2012 Olympics will be about $16.5 billion, three times the original estimate.

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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 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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