Friday, November 23, 2007
Olympic Highlights
IOC ACTIVITIES
PRESIDENT
This week, IOC President Jacques Rogge
unveiled a new brick in the donors’ wall at the
Olympic Museum in Lausanne - that of Chinese
company Aigo. The ceremony took place in the
presence of a delegation from Aigo; Chinese
Ambassador in Switzerland Zhu Bangzao; IOC
Honorary President Juan Antonio Samaranch;
and Olympic Museum Director Francis Gabet.
In Vidy, the IOC President has met:
- International Judo Federation President
Marius Vizer;
- Jole and Biserka Petrovic, who run a
museum dedicated to the memory of their
son, Drazen Petrovic, a Croat basketball
player;
- the Ambassador of the Permanent Mission
of China to the United Nations in Geneva, Li
Baodong;
- Peter Dirk Siemsen of the World Intellectual
Property Organisation (WIPO);
- the Mayor of Lausanne, Daniel Brélaz;
- and a delegation from Atos Origin, led by its
President, Bernard Bourigeaud,
accompanied by Philippe Germond and
Patrick Adiba.
MEMBERS
Several IOC members have been appointed to
the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)’s
Executive Committee for 2008, as
representatives of the Olympic Movement. Arne
Ljungqvist became WADA Vice-Chairman.
Francesco Ricci Bitti will occupy a new
position representing the IOC, Mustapha
Larfaoui ASOIF, Gian-Franco Kasper GAISF,
Rania Elwani the athletes and Craig Reedie
ANOC.
FEDERATIONS
INTERNATIONALES
SUMMER OLYMPIC IFS
The International Hockey
Federation (FIH) has
announced the match schedule
for the Olympic qualifiers. This
first men’s tournament in a
series of six, will be held in North Shore City,
Auckland (New Zealand) from 2 to 10 February
2008. The six teams competing to obtain a ticket
for the Beijing Games are: Argentina, USA,
France, Ireland, New Zealand and Trinidad and
Tobago. The schedules for the other five
Olympic qualification tournaments will be
published in due course. Detailed info on
www.worldhockey.org
NATIONAL OLYMPIC
COMMITTEES
Austrian Olympic
champion Ellen Müller-Preiss died on 8
November at the age of
95. In 1932 in Los
Angeles, she won her first
Olympic medal in the foil -
a gold - which was
followed by two bronze
medals (one in 1936 in Berlin and one in 1948 in
London). She is the only Austrian athlete to
have won an Olympic medal in this discipline.
Triple world champion (1947, 1949 and 1950)
and 21-times Austrian champion, Ellen Müller-
Preiss was named Female Athlete of the Year
for the first time in 1949. In 1975, the IOC
awarded her the Olympic Order.
This week, the Canadian Olympic
Committee (COC) unveiled its
new Athlete Excellence Fund, an
athlete support and reward
programme that will provide
Canadian athletes with performance awards
during the Olympic Games. This announcement
was made at a press conference held in Ottawa
during the second session of the COC’s
Olympic Excellence Series of 2008 Olympic
hopefuls. These performance awards apply to
all Olympic sports, and will be the same for both
team and individual sports. When a team wins a
medal, each of its members will receive the
award. Canadian athletes who compete in
Beijing next year will be the first eligible to
receive the Excellence Fund awards granted to
winners of Olympic medals. Read the full press
release at www.olympic.ca.
American sprinter Robert Taylor died on
13 November in
Missouri City (USA) at
the age of 59. Taylor
was a member of the
American 4x100m relay
team, gold medallists at
the Munich Games in
1972. He also finished second in the 100m at
these same Games.
At a gala organised in Belgrade, the President
of the Serbian NOC, Ivan Curkovic, officially
signed the invitation to participate in the 2008
Games, which was then handed to NOC
Secretary General Predrag Manojlović and the
Chef de Mission for Beijing, Snezana Lakicevic
Stojacic. With the theme of “The man is a word
and an action – an Olympian and a result”, this
gala brought together some 400 guests,
including the Serb athletes already qualified for
Beijing 2008, as well as representatives of the government, city, diplomatic corps, sponsors
and media, and presidents and secretaries
general of national sports federations.
ORGANISING COMMITTEES
FOR THE OLYMPIC GAMES
VANCOUVER 2010
Meeting on 21 November in
Richmond (Canada), the Board
of Directors of the Organising
Committee for the Olympic
and Paralympic Winter Games
and of 2010 in Vancouver
(VANOC) reviewed a series of
key topics for the 2010 Winter Games. The
meeting agenda included the cultural Olympiad,
ceremonies, authorisation of a number of
contracts that will contribute to support the
planning and staging of the 2010 Games, an
update on venue construction and a tour of the
Richmond Oval, which will host speed-skating.
Furthermore, during the VANOC Annual
General Meeting, Jack Poole was re-appointed
as Board Chairman, likewise John Furlong as
CEO. Reports, updates and decisions taken by
the Board of Directors, and a full list of the
VANOC management are available at
www.vancouver2010.com.
SOCHI 2014
This week in Moscow, an Orientation Seminar
allowed the IOC to share with the people
responsible for the organisation of the 2014
Games in Sochi some best practices from
previous Games and lay out the framework of partnership that will guide preparations over the
next seven years. The IOC delegation was led
by Jean-Claude Killy, Chairman of the
Coordination Commission. Besides the
Seminar, Jean-Claude Killy and Gilbert Felli, the
IOC Olympic Games Executive Director, also
attended a meeting with the Presidium of the
Presidential Council responsible for the
preparations for the Olympic and Paralympic
Games in the Russian Parliament – the Russian
White House. More info at www.olympic.org
(“News” section).
YOUTH OLYMPIC GAMES
On 19 November, the IOC announced that it
had selected Athens (Greece), Bangkok
(Thailand), Moscow (Russian Federation),
Singapore (Singapore) and Turin (Italy) as
Candidate Cities to organise the 1st Summer
Youth Olympic Games in 2010. An IOC
Evaluation Commission, chaired by Sergey
Bubka, an IOC Executive Board (EB) member,
and comprising representatives of the Olympic
Movement, will now examine each city’s project.
This Commission will submit a report to the IOC
EB at the end of January 2008. Based on this
report, the EB will recommend which Candidate
Cities will be submitted to the IOC members for
election as the host city. After a postal vote by
all the IOC members, the host city of the 1st
Summer Youth Olympic Games will be
announced at the end of February 2008.
Detailed info at www.olympic.org (“News”
section).
INTERNATIONAL
ORGANISATIONS
Meeting in Madrid
(Spain) from 15 to 17
November, the 3rd
World Conference on
Doping in Sport
concluded with the
adoption by the sports movement and
governments of a Resolution in which they
renewed their commitment to a rigorous fight
against doping in sport and approved the
strengthening of the World Anti-Doping Code.
Furthermore, the Foundation Board of WADA
elected John Fahey as President for the next
three years. He will succeed Richard W. Pound on 1 January 2008. The Resolution text is
available at www.wada-ama.org
The International Paralympic
Committee (IPC) has awarded
the organisation of the World
Championships in Athletics and
Swimming in to 2010 to
Christchurch (New Zealand) and Eindhoven
(Netherlands) respectively. More info at
www.paralympic.org