Bidding Sports Report
Post date: Jul 16, 2013 8:0:56 PM
SHORT-LISTED SPORTS
SQUASH – WSF
July 11, 2013
"Squash would definitely be a renewal of the (Olympic) sports programme, as wrestling is and baseball/softball have been part of it," Danish Crown Prince Frederik said Thursday. "Squash and baseball/softball require new arenas compared to the current Olympic programme, while wrestling likely can share venues with judo and taekwondo," he added in an email to the Danish news agency Ritzau.
WRESTLING – FILA
July 10, 2013
Rogge praised efforts by FILA, the international wrestling governing body, to respond to the challenge presented by the IOC. "They improved vastly the governance of federation by including women and by including athletes with voting rights," Rogge said. "The rules of the sport have changed to make the competition more understandable by the public. Whether this will be enough to give them the selection for 2020, it remains to be seen. (But) they did good work, definitely."
July 11, 2013
FILA announced it will be represented at the ANOCA meeting from 11 – 14 of July by Dr. Alioune Sarr. Dr. Sarr has been the Chairman of the Senegalese National Council for the Management of Traditional Wrestling since 1994 and is widely known and respected throughout the wrestling community in Africa as an event producer and promoter. Prior to taking the chairmanship of this organization, Dr. Sarr served as a Vice President of the organization for 13 years. Dr. Sarr has also organized the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) Wrestling Tournament since 2008. The recently completed 2013 ECOWAS Tournament brought together 13 of the states that make up the ECOWAS and attracted dignitaries, such as His Excellency Kadre Desire Ouedraogo - Senegal’s Minister of Sport. Dr. Sarr also served as the lead organizer for the 2007 African Traditional Wrestling Championships and the 2010 African Championships of Senior Olympic Wrestling.
July 12, 2013
Male and female wrestlers from Albania, Brazil, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Iran, Russia and the United States will compete in a Senior International Tournament in Olympia, Greece, the birthplace of the Olympic Movement, 20-21 July. The tournament will follow the new rules passed by the FILA Bureau at the Extraordinary Congress this past May and represents the themes of FILA’s Save Olympic Wrestling Campaign: wrestling is universal, wrestling is for everyone, and wrestling is one of the original sports. The finals will be live-streamed from the International Olympic Academy on the official FILA Facebook page.
Also this week, U.S. actor Billy Baldwin, a former college wrestling and 2003 inductee into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, launched a series of online auctions to benefit the Committee to Preserve Olympic Wrestling. Bid items will include potential celebrity meet-and-greets, and the following experiences: Rio 2016 ticket packages, including VIP access; one-hour training session with “The Natural” Randy Couture; 3 days/2 nights at the D Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas; lunch with Mike Golic of ESPN's "The Mike & Mike Show"; as well as pre-fight experience with IMPACT star and former Olympian Kurt Angle.
July 13, 2013
Turkey’s Olympic medalist wrestler Rıza Kayaalp could face probes from the IOC and world wrestling governing body for his tweets targeting Armenians and Gezi Park protesters. The daily Radikal reported that the IOC and FILA received complaints about Kayaalp’s tweets on the anti-government protests which spread throughout the country last month after a police crackdown on a group performing a sit-in against a controversial city center renovation project. European and World champion Kayaalp, who also won a bronze medal at the Olympic Games in London last year, advocated that “Armenians” were at the root of the Gezi protests, in a series of tweets he later deleted. His tweets included “You just leave the streets to Armenians, you f**ing looters” and F**k you traitors”. He was then picked to bear the Turkish flag during the opening ceremony of last month’s Mediterranean Games in Mersin and has also featured in a public service announcement prepared by the Minister of Youth and Sports.
2020 BID CITIES
July 10, 2013
Rogge said the three bids are "very close to each other," and the race will come down to each city's "vision" for the Olympics.
ISTANBUL
July 10, 2013
A Spanish IOC member questioned why Turkish bid leaders have failed to show images of women wearing headscarves in Istanbul's presentations for the 2020 Olympics. While declining to answer questions about security in Turkey on Wednesday, Marisol Casado instead raised the issue of women who wear head coverings in the predominantly Muslim country. Casado says "there was one question that was never addressed, and that is the number of women who wear the veil. There was never an image of a woman wearing a veil in any of their presentation videos."
July 10, 2013
Istanbul 2020 will arrive in Abidjan tomorrow for the ANOCA General Assembly, with a delegation featuring several senior government figures and a pledge to build on Turkey’s strong ties with Africa and help African NOCs fulfil their athletes’ full potential. Istanbul 2020’s 14-strong team travelling to the Ivory Coast will be led by Bid Committee Chairman Hasan Arat, and includes the President and the Secretary General of the Turkish NOC, Professor Uğur Erdener and Neşe Gundoğan; and Istanbul 2020 CEO, Ali Kiremitçioğlu. Alongside the bid leadership will be two diplomats with extensive experience of forging productive ties between Turkey and Africa: former Ambassador of the Turkish Republic for Cameroon and advisor to the Istanbul 2020 Bid Committee, Atılay Ersan; and Ambassador of the Turkish Republic for Ivory Coast, Yalçın Kaya Erensoy.
July 11, 2013
Galatasaray's two Ivory Coast players in exile in Turkey, Didier Drogba and Emmanuel Eboue, on Thursday gave their backing to Istanbul's bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games. Drogba told AFP on the sidelines of the general assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa conference, scheduled to start in Abidjan on Friday, that Istanbul was an "ideal" choice. "Turkey has an excellent sporting culture, the country makes athletes its priority. Istanbul would be an ideal host for the 2020 Olympic Games. Istanbul has that magic that every athlete loves," said the former Chelsea striker. Defender Eboue for his part said the city on the Bosphorus was inspiring, while the passion of Turkish supporters "guarantees a fantastic experience for athletes".
MADRID
July 8, 2013
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy says the 2020 Olympics would be a “dream come true” for the whole country. “We want the Games and we will do everything in our power to convince the IOC members that they want to vote for us,” he said. Rajoy’s comments came on a whistlestop visit to Lausanne last week. Unable to attend Madrid’s presentation to IOC members at the extraordinary session on Wednesday, he arrived soon afterwards for a dinner and met with IOC president Jacques Rogge and a number of IOC members. Rajoy left on Thursday morning after meeting more IOC members at Madrid’s bid exhibition room in the Lausanne Palace hotel.
TOKYO
groups. VANK claims they “contradict the IOC’s stated principles of Peace and Humanism.” The July 11, 2013
Senior members of the Tokyo 2020 delegation departed for Abidjan, Ivory Coast today, to attend the ANOCA General Assembly. The attendees are Tsunekazu Takeda, IOC Member and President of both Tokyo 2020 and the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC); Masato Mizuno, Tokyo 2020 CEO; and Yuko Arakida, Tokyo 2020 Sports Director.
July 11, 2013
Sega Sammy Holdings and Nippon Life Insurance Company are the newest sponsors to sign with Tokyo 2020. Wednesday’s deals with the life insurance leader and interactive entertainment specialist make an even 20 bid partners for Japan’s latest Olympics campaign. “In Tokyo 2020's financial forecast, we estimate total amount of local sponsorship, official supplier and licensing revenue to be 1,072 million USD,” Tokyo 2020 tells ATR.
July 11, 2013
Tokyo is promising a model Olympic Games with the world's strictest anti-doping rules if it wins the right to host the 2020 edition. Exacting testing in top-notch laboratories combined with strong social disapproval of chemical enhancements give Japan a leading edge in the race to stamp out doping in sport, advocates say. "Japan is a world leader in anti-doping, and we are proud to have one of the world's highest standards of medical care," said Masato Mizuno. "Japan will continue to be in the forefront of anti-doping activities going forward, and in 2020 we look forward to offering a model of clean sport as a legacy of excellence throughout the world." Japan's record with doping is admirable, say sport insiders. "It is true that Japan is one of the strongest countries" as far as drug testing is concerned, Canadian Dick Pound, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member who was the first president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), told AFP in Lausanne, Switzerland. "The country that does have a few problems is Spain," he said, but added it would not be the decisive factor in the final decision on awarding the competition.