IOC President in Rome meets Italian President, Rome 2024 bid leaders, and receives top sports award

KALYAN KUMAR MAHATA The true appellation of Apu. A Creative Commons license.

       

©CONI (2)

22/05/2015

IOC President Thomas Bach was in Rome to receive the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI)’s highest award for contribution to sport. 

He started the day at the Palazzo Quirinale for a meeting with the Italian President.
The leaders discussed the benefits of sport for society. President Sergio Mattarella said: “the world has many problems. Sport is the antidote to those problems because it enters the hearts and minds of people.”
The two leaders also discussed Rome's bid for the 2024 Olympic Games.
President Bach said that Italy was “very well placed”. “With your great attachment to Olympic ideals, with your athletes and your love of sport you will have a strong bid”, he said, adding: “But you will face strong competition.”

Also at the meeting with the Italian President were CONI President Giovanni Malagò and IOC Members Franco Carraro and Mario Pescante.
As part of the Invitation Phase initiated in the framework of the Olympic Agenda 2020 reforms, the President also met members of the Rome 2024 Olympic bid, including leader Luca Cordero Di Montezemolo and the Mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino.
Later, at the award ceremony, the President was given the “Onesti Award”, named after the long term President of CONI for 34 years until 1978. In the citation, President Bach was praised for “immersing himself in his work with passion” and for “carrying out reforms whilst also respecting tradition.”
Receiving the award, President Bach said he was “glad to be in Italy where you fight for and defend the Olympic values.”
Also at the ceremony were the President of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), Francesco Ricci Bitti; the President of the International Sailing Federation (ISAF), Carlo Croce; the President of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), Bruno Grandi; and the Presidents of the International Skating Union (ISU), Ottavio Cinquanta, and of the International Bobsleigh and Tobogganing Federation (FIBT), Ivo Ferriani.
Previous recipients of the award include Italian sporting icons Alberto Tomba, Sara Simeoni and Pietro Mennea, as well as previous IOC Presidents Juan Antonio Samaranch and Jacques Rogge.

TOP Partner GE supports the IOC ACP Programme

KALYAN KUMAR MAHATA The true appellation of Apu. A Creative Commons license.

         

©Getty Images (1), GE

22/05/2015

The 7th IOC Athlete Career Programme (ACP) Forum, which aims to share best practices on supporting athletes worldwide with their career transitions, will be held in Lima, Peru, from 26 to 28 May.

The Forum will bring together athletes, members of the IOC Athletes’ Commission, NOCs and Adecco representatives, to exchange knowledge and experience on how best to support athletes with balancing dual careers and preparing post-sport careers.
One of the speakers will be former Team USA swimmer and Olympic gold medallist Dan Ketchum, who now works for Worldwide TOP Partner GE as an Operations Leader within the Aviation division. Ketchum will be speaking on a panel about athlete engagement with sponsors, as well as participating in an Athlete Learning Gateway live event focused on athletes in the workplace.

Ketchum said: “I am very excited to be taking part in the IOC ACP Forum. When I finished my career as an athlete, there was little assistance provided to make the transition into the workplace, so I believe the IOC’s Athlete Career Programme will be a great support for other athletes in the future. I want to be able to share the experience and the challenges I faced once my sporting career finished. The IOC is focused on putting athletes at the heart of the Olympic Movement, and, as a former athlete, I believe that there is a lot that GE and I can offer.”
Ketchum competed at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and was part of the winning US team in the men`s 4x200m freestyle relay. Dan joined GE in 2005 as an intern, then a year later transitioned to GE’s Operations Management Leadership Programme.  He has had held several positions in fulfilment, customer service and manufacturing programmes, and currently manages a manufacturing facility for aircraft engines. Dan also spent two years as a high-school swimming coach.
As an advanced technology and services company, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs about 300,000 people worldwide. Since 2006, 17 Olympians have enjoyed careers with GE following their sports career. These athletes work in a wide range of roles across GE. The company is currently planning additional opportunities with the IOC, and the ACP Forum in Peru will be a focal point in the development of how the business can play a long-term role in supporting the IOC’s Athlete Career Programme.
Chris Katsuleres, Director of Olympic Marketing at GE, said: “As a business, we benefit from the attributes that made the Olympians successful in their athletic careers. Their unique backgrounds and traits, like motivation, focus, drive and determination, are a huge benefit in the work place. Working with the IOC ACP, we are very interested in looking at opportunities that we can provide to athletes in the future through enhanced leadership and management training. We have the world-renowned GE training facility at Crotonville in the USA, and we are interested at looking at how we can use this facility to help transfer athletes’ unique skills and assets into the labour market.”

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Net gains - the evolution of beach volleyball

KALYAN KUMAR MAHATA The true appellation of Apu. A Creative Commons license.

       

21/05/2015

Beach volleyball has come a long way since its formative years on the American beaches. Here, we chart the rise of the popular spectator sport.

A cumulative crowd of 425,000 fans gathered in London in 2012 to watch what was beach volleyball’s fifth appearance at an Olympic Games. The scenes in the British capital were a far cry from the sport’s modest beginnings at the early decades of the 20th century. 
©Getty Images
Volleyball – from which the beach variation later derived – can be traced back to 1895, when American William G Morgan created a less physical version of basketball. It took a further 20 years for beach volleyball to evolve, the beaches of Waikiki in Hawaii providing the perfect platform. The sport quickly spread across to Italy, Russia, India and the rest of Europe thanks to American Extradition Forces, and again when troops travelled to Europe in the 1940s.
The sport enjoyed its greatest acceleration in America during the Great Depression of the 1930s, not least because it was cheap to play and offered people a chance to escape their troubles and head to the beach.
The first two-man version of the sport was played in Santa Monica, California. The same US state also hosted the first two-man tournament in 1947.
©Getty Images
California became a real hotbed for beach volleyball, which quickly became as much a part of the local lifestyle as surfing. The Beatles were once photographed passing a ball around during a visit to California on tour while even Marilyn Monroe gave it a namecheck; put simply, it was cool.
In the 1960s, President Kennedy attended the first official volleyball event in Sorrento Beach, Los Angeles. California then hosted its first commercially sponsored tournament in 1974, which lead to further professional tournaments and even a sponsored tour in 1980, which eventually turned national.
The popularity of beach volleyball spread to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where the first international exhibition was hosted in 1986. A year later, the famous Copacabana coastline staged the first international FIVB-sanctioned tournament, which sparked a succession of further competitions all over the world.
©Getty Images
Beach volleyball enjoyed a defining moment in 1994 when it as officially recognised as an Olympic discipline by the IOC. Two years later, in Atlanta, 24 men’s teams and 18 women’s teams competed for Olympic medals on Atlanta Beach in front of sell-out crowds.
©Getty Images
Four years after the overwhelming success of its Olympic debut, beach volleyball became an even bigger hit on Bondi Beach during the Sydney Games. Athletes from USA and Brazil, the two countries that had done so much to develop the sport, dominated the competition, just as they did in Athens in 2004.
By 2008, in Beijing, the event was extended over 14 days of action (it had been six in Atlanta, 10 in Sydney and 12 in Athens). At London 2012, the beach volleyball tournament was played in the shadow of iconic venues such as Big Ben and the London Eye and the players fully lived up to the drama of the occasion. The Americans enjoyed continued success, with American duo Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor winning an incredible third straight Olympic gold in the women’s competition.
©Getty Images
With the focus now shifting to Rio in 2016, there is every reason to expect beach volleyball to enjoy its most spectacular Olympics yet.

President Bach announces widespread changes to IOC Commissions - one third of commission members now women, a 49% increase since he took office.

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31/05/2015

The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, today announced widespread changes to the composition and function of the IOC commissions for 2015. The changes are a direct result of the reforms stemming from implementation of Olympic Agenda 2020.

The review of the scope and composition of the IOC commissions was one of the 40 recommendations approved by the 127th IOC Session last December in Monaco. The new make-up of the Commissions reflects the philosophy initiated by Olympic Agenda 2020, and will provide a strong support to the IOC Session, the IOC Executive Board and the IOC President in the implementation of the roadmap designed to shape the future of the Olympic Movement. The changes to the function and composition of the Commissions have been undertaken by the IOC President working closely with the IOC Executive Board.
President Bach has significantly increased the number of women nominated to a commission compared to two years ago when he was first elected, with a third (32 percent) of places now taken by women. That is a 49 percent increase since he took office. There are also increases in the numbers of members from Africa and Oceania, as well as an increase in the number of chair persons from the Africa and Asia now accounting for 34 percent.
Please click here for an explanation of the changes to the Commissions.
The commissions now also include more representatives from the different stakeholders of the Olympic Movement and, for the first time, representatives from international organisations such as the United Nations. This shows a clear continuity with the open and inclusive consultation process initiated in the early stages of the discussions on Olympic Agenda 2020.

“These changes are another major step in the implementation of Olympic Agenda 2020, the strategic roadmap for the future of the Olympic Movement,” said IOC President Thomas Bach.  “They demonstrate the close dialogue with our stakeholders and society at large, with whom we started this process nearly two years ago. The increase of women’s participation and the broader geographical representation will encourage more inclusive decision making,” he said.
Among the changes, two entirely new commissions have been created: an Olympic Channel Commission, which will ensure that all relevant stakeholders and expertise are consulted throughout the growth and development of the Olympic Channel; and a Communications Commission, which will help to develop strategies to support the promotion of the Olympic values, and the IOC’s vision and mission to a global audience.
Another example of Olympic Agenda 2020 already being implemented is the adoption of recommendations 30 and 31. In line with these recommendations the session in Monaco adopted the new Olympic Charter. It requires the Chair and the members of the new IOC Ethics Commission be elected for the first time by the 128th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur, which will take place from 31 July to 3 August.
Further changes have been made with regard to the structure of the Commissions, the working method and the composition. Please click here for full information and composition of the commissions.

Death of Peter Tallberg, IOC member in Finland

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16/05/2015

It is with great sadness that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has learnt of the death of Peter Tallberg, IOC member in Finland, at the age of 77.

A five-time Olympic sailor, Peter Tallberg was the second-longest serving current IOC member, having been elected in 1976. Only Doyen Vitaly Smirnov, who was elected in 1971, has served longer.
IOC President Thomas Bach immediately reacted to the death of Peter Tallberg: 'As the founding chairman of the Athletes’ Commission, Peter was my first teacher at the IOC,’ he said. ‘He worked all his life for sport and for protecting the clean athletes. The athletes of the world and all those who love sport owe him a huge debt and he has left a lasting legacy for the Olympic Movement for which we can all be grateful. As a mark of respect and to remember such a great man the Olympic flag will be flown at half-mast for three days at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne’ Bach added.
During his 40-plus years working for the Olympic Movement, Mr Tallberg had a strong and far-reaching impact. He chaired the Athletes’ Commission from its inception in 1981 until 2002, when he became an Honorary member of the commission. He was also a member of the following commissions:
- Eligibility (1979-1980)
- Olympic Programme (summer) (1980-1994)
- Olympic Movement (1981-1999)
- Coordination for the Games of the XXV Olympiad in 1992 in Barcelona (1989-1992)
- Study for the Preparation of the Olympic Games of 1996 (1989-1990)
- Preparation for the XII Olympic Congress (1989-1994)
- Enquiry for the Games of the XXVII Olympiad in 2000 (1993)
- Coordination for the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad in 2004 in Athens (1998-2004)
- “IOC 2000” (1999), Evaluation for the XXI Olympic Winter Games in 2010 (2002-2003)
- Coordination for the Games of the XXX Olympiad in 2012 in London (2005-2012)
- Nominations since 2014
Mr Tallberg was the President of the International Yacht Racing Union (IYRU, later International Sailing Federation - ISAF) (1986-1994); President of the Finnish Yachting Association (1977-1983), and President of the Scandinavian Yacht Racing Union (1978-1981).
He captained the Finnish Olympic Yachting team (1976), was Vice-President of the Finnish Squash Association (1974-1976), became a Council member and Secretary General of the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF, later SportAccord) (1988-1998), and was a member of the Executive Board of the European Sport Conference (1994-1998).
Mr Tallberg worked tirelessly to place the athletes at the heart of the Olympic Movement and to protect sport from all forms of corruption. He was a Council Member of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) (1999-2002) and member of the World Olympians Association (WOA) (2007-2014) as liaison for the IOC Athletes’ Commission.
Before transitioning into the administrative side of sport, Tallberg was a decorated sailor who competed in five editions of the Olympic Games. His best performance at the Games was a fourth-place finish in Star at Tokyo 1964. He finished 15th in the 5.5m in Rome 1960, 11th in Star at Mexico City 1968, 12th in Soling at Munich 1972, and 11th in Star at Moscow 1980.
Tallberg was Junior European centreboard yachting champion (1953); Finnish champion in Finn (1969), in Soling (1970 and 1972), in H (1974); Nordic Finn champion (1969); Swedish champion (1963 and 1965) and European Star champion (1967).
He also enjoyed practising other sports, including squash, table tennis, skiing and golf. As a skier, Tallberg was Finnish junior slalom champion in 1954. He finished 3rd in the Finnish senior squash championships in 1978.
The IOC expresses its deepest sympathies to Peter Tallberg’s family.

PyeongChang 2018 celebrates 1,000 days to go with new slogan

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©PyeongChang 2018 (2)

16/05/2015

The PyeongChang 2018 Organising Committee (POCOG) has marked 1,000 days to go until the 2018 Olympic Winter Games by unveiling its Games slogan – “Passion. Connected.” – at a special event in Seoul.

POCOG hopes that these two simple words will help express the objectives and legacies of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games.
“The new slogan embodies POCOG’s vision to expand winter sports participation to a truly global audience and encourages people to create and share their once-in-a-lifetime experiences at PyeongChang,” said POCOG President Yang-ho Cho. “By hosting the 2018 Games we want to make a lasting effect on the youth and inspire the generations to come.”
According to POCOG, “Passion” represents PyeongChang’s status as the stage for a global festival in 2018, where people will experience the excitement of the Olympic spirit, while enjoying the warm hospitality of Koreans and sharing inspiring stories.
“Connected”, meanwhile, signifies the openness of the host city, where every generation can participate in the Games – no matter where they are – thanks to Korea’s cutting-edge technology and cultural convergence.  It also represents a new beginning and the opening of ‘New Horizons’ for winter sports in Asia.
The new slogan was launched at a special event – dubbed ‘Happy PyeongChang, Promise for 1,000 days’ – that took place in Seoul’s Olympic Park.

More than 4,000 participants were expected to take part in the event, including POCOG President Yang-ho Cho, Korean Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Jong-deok Kim, Governor of Gangwon Province Moon-soon Choi, representatives from the sports industry, officials from Host and Venue Cities, dignitaries from the national assembly and members of the public.

PyeongChang 2018 Honorary Ambassadors including Olympic figure skating gold medalist Yuna Kim, artistic director of the Korean National Ballet Sue-jin Kang and former speed skating Olympian Kyou-hyuk Lee, were also planning to come together to participate in a commemorative ceremony to highlight the PyeongChang’s passion and desire to stage a successful Olympic Winter Games over the celebratory weekend.
POCOG President Yang-ho Cho added: “Celebrating just 1,000 days-to-go to the Games today, we’ve seen the connected passion of our citizens and are sure that it will help us to successfully stage Korea’s first Winter Games. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all stakeholders and staff for their support so far, and look forward even more in the remaining 1,000 days.”
In addition to the event in Seoul, other Host and Venue cities also celebrated the 1,000 days-to-go milestone. Gangwon Province operated a special train from Seoul to Chuncheon, the province’s capital, which saw various winter sports stars share their stories with younger athletes and sports fans, while the cities of Chuncheon, PyeongChang, Gangneung and Jeongseon also hosted evening celebrations for local residents to share the festive spirit and enthusiasm for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games.

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UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy pledges greater access to sport for youth refugees

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©Petterik Wiggers (2), UNHCR

11/05/2015

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Honorary President and UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Youth Refugees and Sport, Jacques Rogge, concluded a mission in Ethiopia visiting young South Sudanese refugees last week. Accompanied by IOC Member in Ethiopia Dagmawit Girmay Berhane, he vowed to help provide young refugees with more opportunities to play sport. 

Visiting the Kule and Tierkidi refugee camps in Gambella, where over 200,000 people have sought refuge since violence flared in their homeland two years ago, Rogge met many young refugees and their families. The former IOC President  also watched a number of boys and girls take part in various sporting activities, from athletics to football and volleyball games.

He said: “Sport is a great peace factor. I believe that when teams face each other in refugee camps, they learn to foster respect, reconciliation and friendship.”

The UN Special Envoy took this opportunity to stress the health benefits, and the educational, development and social value of sport and physical activity for youth refugees, asserting that measures will be taken to offer greater access to sport, as the IOC looks to invest in sports facilities and programmes in the region.

Read the full story here
Taking action for youth refugees  
This was the IOC Honorary President’s second field trip with UNHCR since being appointed a UN Special Envoy in 2014. Last October, Jacques Rogge visited the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan, which celebrated its first anniversary earlier this month with a week of celebrations, and cultural and physical activities.



To mark this occasion, the camp officially inaugurated the multi-purpose sports ground funded by the IOC. In addition to providing the facility, the IOC, together with local partners, will also implement a full programme for children to play sports including football, volleyball, basketball, field hockey, and handball, in addition to taking part in the recreational programme already underway in the camp. 

Learn more about the IOC’s cooperation with the UN

Learn more about peace through sport