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Contents
Published: August 2018 by Dunsar Media Company Limited Editor: Duncan Mackay Magazine Editor: Daniel Palmer Managing Director: Sarah Bowron Design: Elliot Willis Willis Design Associates Pictures: Getty Images Staff headshots: Karen Kodish Print: www.csfprint.com Dunsar Media Company Limited C222 MK:TWO Business Centres 1-9 Barton Road Bletchley Milton Keynes MK2 3HU Great Britain +44 1908 821239 contact@insidethegames.biz www.insidethegames.biz No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature without prior written permission of the publisher. Data is published in good faith and is the best information possessed by Dunsar Media Company Limited at the stated date of publication. The publisher cannot accept any liability for errors or omissions, however caused. Errors brought to the attention of the publisher and verified to the satisfaction of the publisher will be corrected in future editions, if any.
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Introduction
Duncan Mackay
In praise of promiscuity David Owen
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Guten Tag Berlin Mike Rowbottom
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A Golden legacy? Michael Pavitt
The BIGGEST test Daniel Etchells
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The lucky seven? Liam Morgan
Let the FUN begin Nick Butler
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THE NEXT GENERATION Nick Butler
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When London called Philip Baker
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It’s good to share Mike Rowbottom
Š and Database Right 2018 Dunsar Media Company Limited All rights reserved.
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HOSTING WINNERS
Sport Event Denmark is celebrating 10 Years! With numerous World Championships and European Championships in Denmark, we are proud to welcome the World of Sport. In the coming years Denmark will host many more world-class events. Starting in 2018 including: Sailing World Championships for all Olympic classes, ITU Multisport World Championships Festival and IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship.
See you in Denmark!
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DUNCAN MACKAY EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES
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his summer marks the launch of an innovative new multi-sport event: the European Championships, which will see 3,000 of the continent’s top athletes from 52 countries compete in aquatics, athletics, cycling, golf, gymnastics, rowing and triathlon during 11 days of competition. The athletics will take place in Berlin and all the other sports in Glasgow, starting on August 1 and concluding on August 12. The event should not be confused with the European Games, first held in Baku in 2015 and which is due to take place for the second time in Minsk next year. Baku was staged on a grand scale drawing comparison with the size and cost of an Olympic Games. But it did not feel like a huge event and failed to really capture the imagination outside of Azerbaijan. It looks like Minsk is shaping up to be the same. So far interest has been minimal, and, outside Belarus, I doubt many people know that it is happening. The athletics and swimming – normally the most popular and watched sports at any major event – were of such low standard at Baku they hardly made any impact among their own supporters, let alone beyond. The European Championships should not suffer from this problem. By taking the existing continental championships and marketing them
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under one banner the quality of competition is guaranteed. The format also means athletes are not expected to take part in another draining competition as the European Championships were an event already on their schedules. By utilising facilities that were already built the costs have been kept relatively low and both Berlin and Glasgow have reputation for staging well organised events. The 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow was one of the most enjoyable events I have covered, while I have always been left awe-struck after my visits to cover athletics at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. The event looks like it has a bright future and it will be interesting to see how they build upon the first edition. It is to be hoped that at the next European Championships – due to be staged in 2022 and for which a host is expected to be announced shortly – athletics and swimming will be staged in the same city, thereby creating a truly memorable experience and atmosphere for spectators. It has always been an anomaly that Europe has not had its own successful continental multi-sport event like the other continents. Asia has been staging its own Games since 1951 – when they took place in New Delhi – and is currently gearing up for its 18th edition. The event this year is due to take in Jakarta and Palembang, a unique two city solution that has come about due to Indonesia stepping in to replace Hanoi after the Vietnamese capital withdrew due to financial problems. The tight schedule means that preparations for organisers in Indonesia are set to go down to the wire but, as Nick Butler reports, they are confident of staging another successful event. I attended the last Asian Games four years ago in Incheon and my head was left spinning
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by the sheer size and magnitude of it. With 462 medals set to be awarded in 40 sports ranging from bridge to sepak takraw, the Games really do offer something for everyone. As debate continues to rage over the benefits of cities hosting major events, the industry needs competitions like the European Championships and Asian Games to be delivered successfully, within budget and to demonstrate that they leave a tangible legacy. Since the last edition of the insidethegames.biz magazine the field to bid for the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games has been further reduced by the withdrawals of Sion in Switzerland and Graz in Austria in the face of hostile public opinion. There is little doubt much of this hostility has been generated by the often-quoted figure of $51 billion that Russia spent on staging the 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Sochi 2014 was one of the jewels in the crown in what was Russia’s “Decade of Sport”, a period which has left the Olympic Movement in turmoil. This is something David Owen investigates in his piece looking back at the last 10 years. Earlier this year, along with my colleague Michael Pavitt, I attended the Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast in Australia. This was a great example of an event that gives multi-sport Games a good name. By ensuring equality and diversity was near the top of the agenda, the Games will be remembered for all the right reasons – which is the way it should be.
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In praise of promiscuity Russia’s Decade of Sport, which drew to a close with the FIFA World Cup, has underlined the perils of overreliance on a single national leader. David Owen reports.
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t began with a speech on July 4, 2007 in Guatemala and it ended with handshakes, disappointment, joy and the presentation of a small gold trophy in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium on July 15, 2018. Russia’s Decade of Sport might have worked out okay for the man who delivered that speech in heavily-accented English in the Central American backwater: President Vladimir Putin, progenitor of New Russia, looks as securely ensconced in the Kremlin as ever, more than 18 years after he first moved in. But for the world of sport, first and foremost the International Olympic Committee, it has been little short of a disaster, a cautionary tale illustrating the wisdom of that homely but time-honoured dictum about not putting all
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your eggs in one basket. If you have not done so recently, it is worth listening again to that short, almost deferential Putin speech on behalf of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic bid, delivered in the Americas on US Independence Day. The speech and early reaction to it encapsulate perfectly how comprehensively times have changed in the space of just 11 years. Putin’s cleverly-judged and workmanlike performance transports you back to an era when IOC members were the masters of the universe. Wrestling with unfamiliar vowels and alien sentence structures, one of the world’s most powerful men deploys artful appeals to the members’ sympathy and lavish, boom-time promises in pursuit of what is not even the most glittering prize his audience has in their gift. The “$12 billion” Sochi Olympic cluster would be completed on time. Guaranteed. Seven in every ten participants would be housed within a five-minute walking distance of competition venues. A list of “special privileges” for participants and guests was being worked on. But remember, Russians “have not yet had the honour to celebrate the Winter Olympics”. Moreover, after the break-up of the Soviet Union - “would you believe it?” - Russia lost all mountain sports venues. “Russia has risen from its knees!” German Gref, Economic Development and Trade
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Minister, was quoted as saying after Sochi had won the day over Pyeongchang (and Salzburg) by four votes, in a ballot that must still haunt some of those who participated in it. “Let the Gains Begin” was the title of an Alfa Bank note to investors cited in the New York Times. Actually, just the previous month, median, single-family house prices had peaked in the US, anticipating the bursting of a bubble that would lead to the financial crisis from which the western world - never mind the business of staging sports mega-events - has still not fully recovered. Though we did not realise at the time, the dawning of Russia’s Decade of Sport – which was also to take in a World Athletics Championship, a World Aquatics Championship, inauguraton of an annual Formula One Grand Prix, the SportAccord Convention and a host of other pinnacle single-sports events - coincided perfectly with the beginning of the end of the Modern Olympics’ first business/media-fuelled golden era. It is the growing disparity between Putin/ Sochi’s lavish promises - which then had to be delivered over the following seven years, while initially also raising the bar for subsequent Olympic bidders - and the prolonged liquidity crunch facing ordinary people in the industrialised West that has been responsible primarily for the first element in the toxic legacy
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DAVID OWEN CHIEF COLUMNIST, INSIDETHEGAMES this Russian decade is leaving behind. This is best summed up by a single, extremely large, number: $51,000,000,000. This, so everybody thinks they know, was the cost of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Four-and-a-half years after the extinguishing of the Olympic Cauldron on the shores of the Black Sea, it is still easy to find people in the Olympic capital of Lausanne who wince at the injustice of this indelible price-tag, which might perhaps be an early example of “fake news”. After all, whether or not the figure bears any relation to reality, most Sochi money was spent not on the Games themselves, but on the general infrastructure necessary to transform an obscure Black Sea town into a modern, year-round resort. As Putin touched on in his speech, strategically, this made a fair amount of sense for Russia; and augmenting Russia’s credentials as a market for winter sports made a fair amount of sense for the sports movement. No matter: the legacy of that fat figure has been paradigm-shifting - and not in a good way, since it has undermined demand for hosting the Games. When that contest for the 2014 event got under way in 2005, the Olympic Games was as soughtafter as tulip bulbs in 1630s Europe or Bitcoin a few months ago. The event was the must-have accessory for any self-respecting global city.
Russia has used sport in a bid to boost their national image. Photo: Getty Images
These days, cities are more than likely, if and when their inhabitants are offered a say in the matter, to turn their backs on the opportunity to make a bid for the Games. “No” votes in referendums have become particularly common in Europe, the continent that has been the epicentre of the Olympic Movement throughout its modern history. In the latest example, voters in part of the IOC’s host nation of Switzerland turned down the chance to stage the 2026 Winter Games. And while the IOC has succeeded in placing the next three editions of the Summer Olympics in world cities of the stature of Tokyo, Paris and Los
Vladimir Putin in Guatemala, where he made a key speech. Photo: Getty Images
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Angeles, such was the concern for 2028 if the two remaining candidates for the 2024 Olympics - Paris and LA - had been allowed to pummel one another into submission that it was decided to gift the 2028 event to the US city uncontested. It is possible to construct an argument to the effect that the stuttering global economy may also have been a factor in the other acutely damaging aspect of the legacy of sport’s Russian decade. Perhaps the hardships experienced by ordinary people, including in Russia, and the contrast between this austerity and the millions being spent on sport, ratcheted up the pressure on Russian athletes and the sport sector as a whole to make sure they crowned this period as the world’s pre-eminent sports host with success. But the shadow cast by widespread doping by Russians (and others) in recent times has already impacted the legacy of four Olympic Games in different ways - and we cannot yet be sure that a fifth edition, Tokyo 2020, will escape unscathed. While one would hope that
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exposure of the inadequacy of worldwide anti-doping measures will eventually have a positive impact by paving the way for a better system, the short-term political fallout from attempting to respond to Russian transgressions has been hugely damaging. The IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency have been repeatedly at odds and now it seems the IOC and the Court of Arbitration for Sport are as well. At any rate, the IOC confirmed in May it plans to appeal a CAS decision to clear 28 Russians accused of doping to the Swiss Federal Tribunal. Meanwhile, the corrosive mood of public cynicism that has enveloped sport - some sports more than others - has been exacerbated both by the extraordinary allegations levelled by Grigory Rodchenkov, the former Moscow laboratory director now in witness protection in the US, and by questions over the application of the regime of therapeutic use exemptions, intended to permit athletes disadvantaged by medical conditions to take otherwise banned medicines to treat them.
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DAVID OWEN CHIEF COLUMNIST, INSIDETHEGAMES
their highest-profile events around to avoid undue exposure to a single national leader or country. This makes all the more sense at a time when mature liberal democracies seem more reluctant to shoulder the burden of multi-sports competitions than at any time in the recent past. However prudent such an approach sounds, though, implementation would not necessarily be easy in practice: Presidents and potentates intent on deploying sport for nation-building purposes, and perhaps to consolidate their own grip on power, will often make the most tempting offers. Meanwhile any new-built
Moscow hosted the IAAF World Championships in 2013. Photo: Getty Images
Sport is finally starting to put the destabilising consequences of this period of intense collaboration with Putin’s Russia behind it. Notwithstanding the wrangling that characterised the recent WADA meetings in Montreal in May, we appear to be edging closer to the sort of accommodation that will permit the normalisation of sporting ties with one of the planet’s great sporting nations. The increasing number of Russians and Russian allies
- the centenary 2030 edition - also looks set to be adequate, with potential bidders from Europe, South America and Africa all on the horizon - even if the legacy of the ill-conceived 2018/2022 World Cup voting process for the organisation has been dire. But, goodness me, what an unholy mess this extended and frankly ill-advised dalliance with one of the most feared and cunning of all world leaders has provoked! Perhaps the overriding lesson from sport’s decade of devotion to Putin should be that the sector ought better to coordinate the placement of upcoming events. Just as no investment manager worth their salt would concentrate funds under his or her management in a single stock or asset class, sports leaders should ensure that they spread
Athletes collect medals at the FINA World Championships in Kazan. Photo: Getty Images
Olympic or other multi-sports constellation becomes an obvious candidate to stage future single-sport World Championships or similar. Even so, if sports leaders are to take one lesson from this decade of Putin - even allowing for the rather pleasing football World Cup that Russia laid on - it surely has to be that when it comes to partnerships with national leaders, promiscuity should be encouraged.
Grigory Rodchenkov sparked the Russian doping crisis. Photo: Getty Images
sitting in prominent positions on international sports bodies, as highlighted by the latest edition of the Sports Political Power Index, might actually help with this process. Winter sports have switched focus to China, which seems sensible in a strategic sense, even if it is impossible to say how long-lasting the fondness for snow and ice sport that Beijing 2022 seems certain to inculcate among the growing Chinese middle classes will prove to be. The Summer Olympics, as touched on above, have already been parcelled out to strong partners in three different continents for the whole of the next decade. Demand for the next FIFA World Cup on offer www.facebook.com/insidethegames
The FIFA World Cup in Russia this year has been a success. Photo: Getty Images
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Usain Bolt created magical memories at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. Photo: Getty Images
Guten Tag Berlin Germany’s capital will play a key part in the inaugural European Championships when the famous Olympic Stadium hosts athletics. Mike Rowbottom looks at a venue which is steeped in history. 10
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erlin’s historic Olympic Stadium will play its part in August in the staging of the first multi-event European Championships. While Glasgow hosts aquatics, cycling, golf, gymnastics, rowing and triathlon from August 2 to 12, the athletics will take place at the cavernous arena originally built for the 1936 Olympics. Enduringly, the 1936 Games conjure the image of Jesse Owens, the black American sprinter and long jumper whose achievement in winning four gold medals defied the vision of the Games by the German Führer, Adolf Hitler, as a showpiece for the Nazi Party’s racist ideology. But if those Games remain the high point in terms of the stadium’s sporting history, they are
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run close by some of the subsequent contests that have taken place on the site of an old racecourse that was originally developed into a stadium ready to hold the 1916 Games which were then prevented from taking place by the First World War. The European Athletics Championships are due to feature some of the world’s leading performers, such as France’s world pole vault record holder Renaud Lavillenie and Sweden’s world junior record holder Armand Duplantis. Double women’s world high jump champion Mariya Lasitskene, Norway’s world 400m hurdles champion Karsten Warholm and Germany’s world and Olympic champions in the javelin, respectively Johannes Vetter and Thomas Rohler, will also be there.
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But it will have its work cut out to match some of the epic performances that have taken place within this giant bowl of an arena over the last 82 years. Nine years ago it hosted one of the International Association of Athletics Federations’ most memorable World Championships, at which Jamaica’s Usain Bolt set the current world 100 and 200m records of 9.58 seconds and 19.19sec respectively. Those Championships also produced a startling performance from South Africa’s 18-year-old Caster Semenya, whose victory in the women’s 800m gave rise to a controversy over hyperandrogenism which is being vigorously renewed this year following her country’s decision to appeal against impending IAAF legislation regarding the monitoring of testosterone levels in female athletes. The stadium’s footballing strand, too, has reached the summit of possibilities - it hosted group matches for the 1974 FIFA World Cup finals, with both West and East Germany playing on its turf. And when the World Cup finals returned in 2006, it hosted group matches, an epic quarter-final in which Germany beat Argentina on penalties and the final itself, where Italy took the Cup on penalties after drawing 1-1 with France. When the International Olympic Committee awarded Germany the 1936 Olympics in 1931, the original plan was to restore and re-use the stadium already built for the cancelled 1916 Games. But once the Nazis came to power in 1933 the Games were seen as the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the supreme might of Germany’s power in a sporting and architectural context.
Jesse Owens leaps to success in 1936. Photo: Getty Images
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Hertha Berlin have made the venue their home. Photo: Getty Images
Hitler ordered the construction of a stadium so toweringly huge that it was almost minatory. The resulting design, sunk into the ground and bearing some resemblance to the ancient Roman Colosseum, held 110,000 people. In keeping with an ideology that would eventually provoke the Second World War, the Nazi Party sought initially to prevent any Jewish competitors taking part. After that stance raised talk of a proposed boycott, the order was modified to preclude German Jews from taking part, although one, fencer Helene Mayer, did compete. Mayer had moved to America and had been stripped of her club membership back home. However, she was later “invited” back to compete in the Games. Very much the picture of the Aryan ideal of a German woman, she even gave the Nazi salute on the podium after winning silver in the individual foil event. In later years, the story was told - and not always discouraged by Owens himself - of how Hitler had snubbed him by refusing to shake his hand after his victories, his form of congratulation for German winners. This was not so. Hitler had indeed shaken hands with all the German victors on the first day of competition, and with the three medal winners in the 10,000m, who were all from Finland, his future allies in the Second World War. But Olympic officials then insisted he acknowledge publicly either all of the winners or none. Hitler chose the latter course. Despite the racism of the Nazi regime, with its talk of “black auxiliaries”, Owens found the atmosphere in Berlin personally supportive for much of the time. He was cheered by the crowd - “Yesseh Oh-vens, Yesseh Oh-vens” - and @insidethegames
mobbed by autograph hunters. He also received friendship and support from Germany’s tall, blue-eyed, blonde Aryan dream of a long jumper, Luz Long. When Owens approached his third and final qualifying mark still needing to register a distance long enough to take him into the afternoon’s final, Long spoke to him and then advised him to move his back to lessen the risk of over-stepping on the take-off board again. Owens did so, duly qualified, and went on to win gold. Two years after those momentous 1936 Games the international sporting focus switched back to the Berlin Olympic Stadium as an England football team containing players such as Stanley Matthews, Eddie Hapgood, Cliff Bastin and Len Goulden met a German side whose fortunes were being overseen on the night by Hermann Goering, commander-inchief of the Luftwaffe, and Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda.
Zinedine Zidane’s notorious headbutt in 2006. Photo: Getty Images
As they prepared for the match in the dressing room, England’s players heard from the Football Association that they would be expected to reciprocate the Germans’ salute of their
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Barcelona lifted the Champions League trophy at the stadium. Photo: Getty Images
anthem by giving the Nazi salute to mark that of the hosts. The players angrily refused - but were ordered to comply, being told it needed “only a spark to set Europe alight”. They complied - but all turned their heads to the left to look at two isolated England supporters waving a British flag. England won 4-2, one of their goals a 35-yard volley from West Ham’s Len Goulden. “Let them salute that one,” he shouted, his words clearly audible in the hushed stadium. The arena’s main footballing use in the post-war era has involved Hertha Berlin, who have played there since 1963. In that time Hertha’s fortunes have fluctuated, but they earned promotion to Germany’s top level of the Bundesliga in 2013 and have played UEFA Champions League and Europa League football. They finished tenth in the 2017-2018 season. During their tenure the stadium has undergone extensive renovations, in 1974 and between 2000 and 2004, as a precursor to the hosted World Cups. In 1998, Berliners debated the destiny of the Olympiastadion in light of the legacy it represented for Germany. Some wanted to tear the stadium down and build a new one from scratch, while others favoured letting it slowly
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crumble “like the Colosseum in Rome”. Finally, it was decided to renovate. Over the last 30 years open air concerts have taken place there by acts including the Rolling Stones, U2, Michael Jackson, Guns N’ Roses, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna. The stadium has also hosted American Football - five American Bowls between 1990 and 1994 were staged there - and the arena was home to Berlin Thunder in NFL Europa from 2003 until 2007, when the league’s operator, the
Sports such as American football have been played at the venue. Photo: Getty Images
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US National Football League, closed down the competition. In the 2006 World Cup final, the French had kept the score level despite having lost the services of key midfielder Zinedine Zidane near the end of extra time when he was sent off for a head-butt to the chest of Italian defender Marco Materazi, whose header had equalised Zidane’s early penalty. Zidane had clearly been provoked by something Materazi said, which later interviews revealed may have been an insult to his sister. Zidane said, after what was his last match as a professional, that he would “rather die than apologise”. In 2011 the stadium hosted Germany’s opening match in the FIFA Women’s World Cup finals. Four years later the UEFA Champions League final was played there, with Barcelona taking the trophy for a fifth time with a 3-1 win over Juventus. But the athletics link to the stadium has been a strong and unbroken one since Owens electrified its track and field in 1936, thanks to the Internationales Stadionfest meeting, first held in 1921 and an annual fixture, since 1937, at the arena that hosted the Olympic athletics. So far in the stadium, this meeting - which
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The German capital’s Stadium is reaped in history. Photo: Getty Images
since 2010 has been part of the IAAF World Challenge meetings, the second tier of global one-day athletics events - has produced 19 world records. The first was a women’s 100m mark of 11.6sec by Stanislawa Walasiewicz of Poland, Olympic silver medallist a year earlier, who died in 1980 after being caught in crossfire during an armed robbery in a Cleveland parking lot and was discovered to have both male and female sexual characteristics. The first post-war world record at the event came in 1970 from Australia’s Kerry O’Brien, who ran the 3,000m steeplechase in 8min 22sec. Five years later two world records went at the same meeting as Steve Williams of the United States ran the 100m in 9.90sec, and France’s Guy Drut, who would be Olympic champion within a year, set a 110m hurdles mark of 13.00sec. On August 26, 1977, East Germany’s Rosemarie Ackermann equalled her own women’s high jump world record of 1.97m before becoming the first woman to clear 2.00m.
In 1985, Morocco’s Said Aouta lowered the world 1,500m record to 3:29.46sec, and another landmark middle distance record emerged in 2010 as Kenya’s David Rudisha lowered the 800m world record of 1:41.11 set by Wilson Kipketer in 1997 as he clocked 1:41.09.
Hitler marches in at the Opening Ceremony of the Berlin 1936 Olympics. Photo: Getty Images
The Rolling Stones are among famous music acts to have played at the venue. Photo: Getty Images
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The world records that resonate most strongly in connection with Berlin, however, remain those set by Bolt - at what, it is now clear, was the dizzying height of his career - during the 2009 World Championships. A year earlier he had appeared to slow down in the final strides of the Olympic final in Beijing, bashing his fist against his chest as he crossed the line in 9.69sec to trim 0.03sec off the mark he had unexpectedly set earlier in the season. This time, in Berlin, there was nothing but serious intent from the charismatic Jamaican as he lowered his 100m mark to 9.58sec on August 6, and four days later trimmed his 200m mark from the 19.30sec he had set in Beijing - breaking Michael Johnson’s outstanding mark of 19.32sec from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics - to the one that stands top of the list now, 19.19sec. Perhaps Bolt’s outstanding athletic performance in the event about which he was always most serious.
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The Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games have been and gone, so the focus now turns to legacy. Michael Pavitt explores the future impact of the event.
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s the final whistle went at the end of the men’s rugby sevens final at Gold Coast 2018, New Zealand were able to celebrate a 14-0 triumph against Olympic champions Fiji to clinch the last of the 275 gold medals awarded at the Commonwealth Games. The 12 days of the Games provided entertainment and little controversy, so it was a shame a bland Closing Ceremony will be remembered for the negative reasons. However, the Games themselves will surely be remembered as a huge, and dare I say it, expected success. For the Commonwealth Games Federation this comes as a welcome boost, with two consecutive strong editions of their flagship event being held back-to-back and another seemingly safe pair of hands having been secured for 2022 in Birmingham. With sporting competition now some months in the past, thoughts will turn to the legacy the multi-sport event brought to the Gold Coast and the key question: was it worth it? Gold Coast 2018 chairman Peter Beattie certainly views the Games to have been. The former Queensland Premier believes the
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Australian city has gained knowledge, confidence and a greater understanding of its place in the Commonwealth as a direct result of playing host. “The Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, Australia will be remembered for many reasons,” Beattie said. “Not least because of the number of ‘firsts’ that the world witnessed during 12 days of sensational sporting competition and exhilarating arts and culture events. “For the first time a Commonwealth Games was held in a regional Australian city, giving us the opportunity to show the world where we are, who we are and the passion with which we live our lives. “Of all the knowledge we transfer across from venue overlay and competition management to transport, technology, security, medical, ticketing and sponsor attraction and all other manner of preparatory items, it well may be that the most important lessons we at Gold Coast 2018 learned were of people and place. “For all our noble intention of showing the world who we are, we probably learned just as much about ourselves. “Our Games gave us a chance we would not
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There was fair play at the weightlifting. Photo: Getty Images
have otherwise had to look at our place in the Commonwealth and see what’s possible when people of talent and determination work together.” A boost to a city’s prestige and skills can certainly be viewed as a legacy, although one that is difficult to quantify. However, it came as no surprise that the Queensland Government looked to take full advantage of the eyes of the sporting world being on the state during the Games. On the eve of the Games getting underway, the Queensland Government launched their official tourism slogan “Beautiful One Day,
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The squash venue will be used in the film industry. Photo: Getty Images
Tom Daley dedicated his success to LGBT inclusion. Photo: Getty Images
Gold Coast 2018’s focus now turns to legacy. Photo: Getty Images
Perfect The Next”. With Gold Coast’s economy having largely been centred around tourism, it made perfect sense that the Games would be used as leverage to highlight the assets the region has. For instance, coupling the slogan with beaming images of sun and beaches around the world was certainly enticing to many people from around the Commonwealth who could have been thinking about planning a visit to the Games. Or in the case of some athletes, attempt to stay there when your visa has expired… As boosting visitors to the Gold Coast was certainly an aim of the State Government, it made sense that Kate Jones was given the joint responsibility of being Minister for Tourism, Major Events and the Commonwealth Games. Jones has claimed that Government projections have shown that over the next nine years they are expecting around half a million extra visitors to Queensland as a direct result of the Games. An additional boost to the region is anticipated to come from increased trade, with links forged throughout the build-up and during the Games themselves. www.facebook.com/insidethegames
A trade programme, entitled Embracing 2018, was promoted as a unique opportunity for Government and business leaders to meet, build new relationships and strengthen trade and investment ties. More than 30 events were held in Queensland as part of the programme, while 38 international delegations were said to have attended the Games due to an international engagement campaign held alongside the Queen’s Baton Relay. Jones has claimed as many as 80 per cent of attendees of the trade programme stated they had identified business opportunities. The Queensland Government has forecast that they will receive close to an extra AUS$500 million in foreign direct investment as a result of the Games. Forging trade links has also been cited as a key factor in the British Government’s decision to back the effort to bring the Games to Birmingham in 2022, particularly with Brexit
David Grevemberg speaks at Gold Coast 2018. Photo: Getty Images
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approaching ever more rapidly on the horizon. “Sporting events aren’t just about what takes place on the pitch, the track or in the pool,” said Matt Hancock, formerly UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. “They also present a fantastic opportunity to spark new trade relationships and forge new trade deals. “We are committed to building strong and enduring trading partnerships with our friends across the Commonwealth. “As part of this mission, there will be a major trade Expo before the Birmingham Games and a major programme to build business links with Commonwealth nations.” While the business aspects are perhaps overlooked when the Games’ legacies are assessed, the use of venues is heavily scrutinised. Should a newly constructed venue lie dormant with little community use, there will be questions around its purpose. Similarly, what would be the point of constructing a world class facility, if it does not play host to world class events? Both the Coomera Indoor Sports Centre and the Carrara Sports and Leisure Centre look likely to receive strong community use, with the facilities attracting locals even before the Games. The Anna Meares Velodrome, based in Brisbane, will be used over the next three years as part of a cycling festival. A deal was announced in June which will see Brisbane host a national road series event, the Cycling Australian Track National Championships, and the final of the Six Day international track series. Unsurprisingly, the decision was viewed as another indication that the Games was providing a legacy. There is certainly a strong effort being made to secure major sporting events in Queensland, which was cited before the Games as part of
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The Games should lead to a tourism boom. Photo: Getty Images
the efforts to help diversify the region’s, and particularly Gold Coast’s, economy. Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate has already given his support towards a potential bid for the IAAF World Athletics Championships, while there have been suggestions that facilities used at Gold Coast 2018 could be involved in a potential Queensland bid for the 2032 Olympic Games, which continues to flirted with. Writing in The Parliamentarian Journal, Jones claimed the Games showed Queensland’s ability to deliver world class events. “We wanted to prove Queensland is a world leader when it comes to major events,” she said. “The Queensland Government is committed to investing in our major events sector and making it as easy as possible to host high quality sporting events in Queensland. “Our message to people of the world is simple, we have the destination, we have the infrastructure. “And we have the runs on the board when it comes to hosting major sporting events.” The development of the Athletes’ Village was also designed to help provide accommodation for the Gold Coast’s health and knowledge precinct. It was claimed in the build-up to the Games
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that the 1,200 apartments and townhouses would help to provide thousands of new jobs in the education, medical and science sectors. One imagines the progress in these areas will not be measured in years, but potentially over the next few decades. Construction of Sound Stage 9, which hosted boxing and squash competition during the Games, will also be viewed as another legacy project. The site has provided Village Roadshow film studios with the largest sound stage in the southern hemisphere, which is hoped will continue to drive major film productions to Gold Coast, providing another boost for the industry in the region. Commonwealth Games Federation chief executive David Grevemberg stated that ensuring the local community benefited was a fundamental priority for the organisation and Gold Coast 2018. “Gold Coast 2018 has undisputedly contributed to building a more peaceful, sustainable and prosperous Commonwealth at home and abroad,” he said. “Across the Gold Coast 2018 Games partnership, there was an unrelenting focus on delivering an unforgettable global Games, that engaged citizens and communities, fostered pride through global
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respect and recognition, diversified economic growth on the Gold Coast, and moved the dial on issues related to social justice and indigenous reconciliation.” Grevemberg pointed to key social issues being discussed during the Games, including discussion over lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning inclusion. England’s Tom Daley has called for the Commonwealth to work towards changing attitudes in countries which criminalise homosexuality after winning diving gold at the Games. Homosexuality is still a criminal offence in 37 of the countries that competed at the Games.
British Virgin Islands won their first gold medal. Photo: Getty Images
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CGF President Louise Martin has predicted lasting benefits. Photo: Getty Images
Gender equality was also highlighted by the CGF during the Games, with an equal number of medals for men and women, as well as increases in the number of female technical officials. A Reconciliation Action Plan was introduced to help organisations contribute to “reconciliation” in Australia, outlining practical actions they can take. The decision to develop the plan was taken in 2015, with Gold Coast 2018 claiming it would help to generate awareness and recognise indigenous culture, as well as building respect for traditional land owners. Grevemberg believes the discussions around these issues at the Games will make an impact going forwards, something that will continue the CGF’s aim to deliver a Modern Commonwealth. “Gold Coast 2018 was a positive step in our Movement’s journey on addressing truth and reconciliation initiatives through the power of sport,” Grevemberg said. “We were privileged to have the indigenous peoples from 15 different Commonwealth countries with us on the Gold Coast. “We now look forward to taking this important conversation concerning first nation’s peoples’ rights to other parts of our family of nations as we continue to champion Commonwealth sport as a global force for good. “I’m truly proud of the global discourse created on the crucial issues surrounding reconciliation and indigenous rights in Australia www.facebook.com/insidethegames
and the broader Commonwealth. “This initiative, with others, was part of a far-reaching commitment to equality, which saw Para-Sport, gender equality and LGBTI inclusion also take centre stage. “As a diverse and thriving Commonwealth city, I’ve no doubt that Birmingham 2022 will lead and transform these important conversations once again in four years’ time.” CGF President Louise Martin praised the performances of athletes at the Games, expressing her view that their efforts would inspire people across the Commonwealth and beyond. Martin stated that there were nine world and 83 Games records set in Gold Coast, highlighting the quality of the multi-sport event. Five small and islands states were also able to celebrate their maiden Commonwealth medals at the Games, including the British Virgin Islands celebrating a first ever gold. “I passionately believe that the inspiring and impactful performances of our Commonwealth athletes at Gold Coast 2018 will leave an enduring legacy for Commonwealth sport,” Martin said. “More than anything, however, I think it’s the personal, powerful stories and actions of so many Commonwealth athletes that leave the strongest legacy for the Commonwealth Sports Movement. “The sportsmanship of Kiwi weightlifter David Liti, the passion and activism of boxer Clotilde Essian, the history-making Michelle @insidethegames
Lee-Ahye, Tom Daley dedicating his medals to Commonwealth LGBT inclusion - it’s the athletes who have helped us write a new chapter in our modern Commonwealth’s history.” New Zealand’s Liti was awarded the David Dixon Award because of his sportsmanship and compassion towards a rival lifter, after Samoa’s Lautiti Lui suffered a knee injury. This included the gold medallist helping his rival, who won silver, onto the podium. Cameroonian boxer Essian has helped children in her country gain legal recognition by ensuring that they have birth certificates, while Lee-Ahye became the first woman from Trinidad and Tobago to earn a gold medal at the Games when she triumphed in the 100m. These stories, Martin believes, are worth highlighting and celebrating when the legacy of the Games is assessed. “What we witnessed on the Gold Coast instilled incredible pride and new meaning in Commonwealth sport, as athletes passionately delivered as high performance competitors on the field of play, and champions of causes and communities off it,” Martin said. “When I spoke at the opening of the Games, I asked the assembled athletes to grasp the opportunity of the Commonwealth Games and create their own history and fulfil their dreams. “I’m humbled - and very excited about the future of Commonwealth sport - when I think about how magnificently they rose to this challenge.”
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The
BIGGESTtest Weightlifting is fighting for its Olympic survival but the sport is making progress in its bid to remain on the programme. Daniel Etchells reports.
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here is no doubting that it has been an extremely challenging year for the International Weightlifting Federation. Despite receiving the pleasing news from the International Olympic Committee on June 9, 2017 that all 28 core sports due to appear on the programme at Tokyo 2020 will remain for Paris 2024, there were also two “caveats” highlighted, one of which was not so welcomed by the world governing body. “The International Weightlifting Federation has until December 2017 to deliver a satisfactory report to the IOC on how they will address the massive doping problem this sport is
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facing,” IOC President Thomas Bach said. “We have sent a strong signal to weightlifting by reducing the quota for athletes for Tokyo 2020.” It was announced earlier that same day that weightlifting has lost 64 quota places for Tokyo 2020, meaning a reduced total of 196 athletes will appear in the Japanese capital, where there will be one fewer medal event. Fast forward six months and it was deemed that the report delivered by the IWF was indeed satisfactory enough for the IOC to keep weightlifting on probation. The main changes highlighted in the report focused on a new hard-line approach to doping, including the handing over of the IWF’s antidoping programme to the International Testing Agency. The IOC, however, requested a further report to be submitted in June 2018 to show the sport can implement its plans. This was discussed at the IOC’s last Executive Board meeting, held in Lausanne from July 18 to 20.
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Among the things the IOC wanted the IWF to do was target countries who are serial offenders by making it more difficult for them to qualify for the Olympic Games. High on the world governing body’s priority list were the nine nations - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine - that were banned for one year in October 2017 for multiple doping offences. They, like all other countries, will now be subject to the IOC-approved Tokyo 2020 qualification system, an important step in ensuring a new competition structure and process which will support clean competition at the Olympic Games. Athletes will be tested far more often than in the past, as they must compete at least six times in the 18-month qualifying period that starts on November 1. But not all the nations are happy about it, most notably Kazakhstan who angered rival countries in June by appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over the new system.
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DANIEL ETCHELLS REPORTER, INSIDETHEGAMES
While countries with a clean record can send eight athletes to Tokyo 2020, Kazakhstan can send a maximum of two - one man and one woman - because their athletes have been caught cheating so often. In the past 10 years, Kazakhstan weightlifters have tested positive 36 times at international championships, the Olympics and out of competition. Ilya Ilyin was the most prominent name among the eight Kazakhs disqualified after the IOC re-tested samples from the Beijing 2008 and London 2012 Olympics. They lost five gold medals, two of them won by Ilyin, plus a silver and a bronze, for testing positive retrospectively. No nation in the world has had more positives than Kazakhstan since 2008, the date which the IWF used as a start point in assessing its members’ doping record for the purposes of awarding quota places for Tokyo 2020. Several other countries are restricted to reduced places in Tokyo because they have accrued 20 or more positives in the past 10 years, Russia and Azerbaijan being among them. Ilyin has publicly declared his intent to compete at Tokyo 2020 in June of this year. He did so on the same day Kazakhstan Weightlifting Federation secretary general www.facebook.com/insidethegames
Aldiyar Nuralinov explained the body’s decision to challenge the qualification system for Tokyo 2020. Nuralinov claimed the body is being “forced to re-punish in the form of a restriction on the number of athletes, which contradicts the interests of our country, where weightlifting is one of the biggest sports”. “Moreover, these rules infringe the interests of ‘clean’ athletes,” he added. Kazakhstan is by no means the only country to express concerns, however. In April, it was confirmed that Iran intended to protest against their reduced quota of places in weightlifting at Tokyo 2020, which their national federation describes as “unfair” for a nation that has had no doping violations in the past four years. Ali Moradi, President of the Iranian Weightlifting Federation, said he fully supported the anti-doping initiatives of the IWF but felt the good record of his own nation in recent years had not been taken into consideration. He said that famous athletes like Kianoush Rostami, Sohrab Moradi, Behdad Salimi and Saeid Alihosseini have “always been tested in and out of competition and remain clean at the highest level”. All four of those lifters have held junior or senior world records, and all won medals at the IWF World Championships in Anaheim last year, where Iran finished with 14 men’s podium finishes. But Iran can send only two of them to Tokyo 2020 because of the restrictions. Meanwhile in Belarus, one of the five countries restricted to only two places at Tokyo 2020, the national coach has described the new hard-line policy of the IWF as “a disaster” for his own nation, Russia and Kazakhstan. The country’s 1976 Olympic champion Valery Shary, who competed for the Soviet Union, said he did not think the IWF’s policy would clean up the sport. He did not suggest what would, however, and perhaps therein lies the problem. Is there actually a way? The number of countries that are facing a ban from Tokyo 2020 is a reflection of just how widespread the problem of doping is. What is arguably even more concerning @insidethegames
is that it is young weightlifters that are putting their participation in doubt. In the case of Egypt, the country’s weightlifters, at least two of whom would be strong medal contenders, are in danger of missing Tokyo 2020 because of a slew of 2016 doping positives by teenagers. Egypt’s absence would be a huge disappointment to the 77 kilograms world champion Mohamed Ihab and Sarah Ahmed, both of whom won Olympic bronze medals at Rio 2016. Ihab and Mahmoud Mahgoub, President of the Egyptian Weightlifting Federation, both said that the positives were the result of a conspiracy and that Egyptian weightlifting was “clean”. Any nation with three or more positives in a calendar year is liable to a suspension - two years in this case - and a hefty fine. When the IWF sent a team of testers to an Egypt training camp in Fayoum, before the African Youth and Junior Championships in nearby Cairo in December 2016, seven athletes tested positive and two were 14-year-old girls. Should the Independent Member Federations Sanctions Panel, whose creation was a feature of the IWF’s new anti-doping policy adopted in April this year, choose to impose the maximum penalty for seven doping violations within a calendar year, it would be a two-year suspension, which would exclude Egypt from Tokyo 2020, and a fine of $250,000. Malaysia also faces a two-year ban from weightlifting that would keep it out of Tokyo 2020, because three more of their athletes were recently caught taking steroids.
Main picture: Weightlifting is facing a huge battle to remain on the Olympic programme. Photo: Getty Images Bottom: Ilya Ilyin has been stripped of two Olympic gold medals. Photo: Getty Images
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Weightlifting has adopted a number of measures in a bid to keep its Olympic place. Photo: Getty Images
The Malaysian Weightlifting Federation has had five positives since last October, but as one of them was the result of a test carried out by its own national anti-doping agency, only four count towards international sanctions. The three latest positives, all for stanozolol, take Malaysia to a total of 10 since 2008, which would lead to a reduced quota for Tokyo 2020 - but because so many of them have come within a year, the country is likely to be banned anyway, and fined $100,000. They were announced by the IWF in May after it conducted out-ofcompetition tests at the national team base in Bukit Jalil on March 28. One of the three is aged 16, one is 20 and the third is 21. In June, Azerbaijan’s place at Tokyo 2020 was put into doubt after it was confirmed that another teenaged weightlifter from the country had tested positive for anabolic steroids. Ukraine, which has had two young lifters suspended, is also in line for a ban that could keep its weightlifters out of Tokyo 2020. Incredibly, it appears that both nations had teenagers competing while doped at the European Junior Championships in the very week when their one-year bans started last October. Four athletes from those Championships in Durres in Albania have been disqualified; two are from Ukraine, one from Azerbaijan and the fourth is Nikjolay Panayotidi from Russia. Bizarrely, only two weeks prior to its latest positive emerging, Azerbaijan had a one-year suspension cut short by the IWF for making “significant progress” in its anti-doping efforts. But the latest case takes the country to three within eight months, making it liable to a suspension that would keep it out of Tokyo 2020. Ukraine has had two of its athletes suspended, and with one case outstanding against the double European champion Oleksandr Pielieshenko, it is also on course for three in a year. As well as Azerbaijan, the IWF also announced in June that Turkey and Armenia would have their doping-related suspensions from international www.facebook.com/insidethegames
weightlifting competitions lifted early. Turkey were free to participate at youth events from June 11 and at junior and senior ones from June 19. Armenia and Azerbaijan were allowed to feature at youth events from June 19 and will be at junior and senior ones from August 19. It followed a recommendation from the IWF’s supposedly independent monitoring group. So there are some signs of progress and weightlifting’s world governing body must be commended for its efforts. It was only back in April that IOC President Bach recommended other sports to follow the lead set by the IWF and consider stripping Tokyo 2020 quota spots from countries where there are serious doping problems. He cited the idea as a “collective” sanction which could help eradicate doping problems, during a discussion specifically about the problems in Russia. But the problem for the IWF, in terms of its hopes of keeping its place on the Olympic programme, is that the issue is so entrenched in the sport and has not shown any sign of letting up during the probation period. The world governing body believes it has done what it can to try to prevent doping and effectively sanction those countries who continue to do it. The onus, as far as the IWF is concerned, is now on the member federations to take heed. This became particularly evident at the recent IWF Congress in Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent, where President Tamás Aján gave a stern warning to countries that weightlifting will “slowly disappear” if it loses its place on the Olympic programme and pleaded with them to cut out anything that leads to wrongdoing. Aján’s speech certainly had an element of last chance saloon about it. Sink or swim? Paris 2024 or no Paris 2024? The next few months could well define the future of weightlifting for decades to come.
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The lucky seven? Athletics, cycling, golf, gymnastics, rowing, triathlon and swimming are hoping to reap the rewards of the innovative new European Championships. Liam Morgan speaks to the sport’s European Presidents who are hoping their luck will be in.
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lasgow and Berlin will soon be the focal point of the sporting world as the two cities gear up to host the inaugural edition of the 2018 European Championships. The event will combine continental championships across seven sports, with cycling, golf, gymnastics, rowing, swimming and triathlon taking place in the Scottish city and athletics being held nearly
1,100 miles away in the German capital. As the clock ticks down to the opening day, questions still remain. What are the benefits for each sport? What future does it have? And is it a better idea than the European Games? insidethegames spoke to the heads of the seven European governing bodies to find out.
Top: Seven sports will be involved in the new European Championships concept. Photo: Glasgow 2018 The medals which will be given to the winners. Photo: Glasgow 2018
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Above: European Championships ambassador Max Whitlock with mascot Bonnie the Seal. Photo: Glasgow 2018
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ATHLETICS
The one anomaly on the European Championships programme is athletics. While combining the disciplines seems to make sense, grouping six sports in a single location and holding another in a different city does not. European Athletics President Svein Arne Hansen disagrees. “Athletics is fully part of it,” he says. “People watching at home will be watching one event - just like the Olympic Games - emphasised by a common branding on-site, on-air, in digital and across all seven sports. “In the Olympic Stadium and at the European Mile at the Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, there will be pictures and results from Glasgow to tell the European Championships story between the two cities. “Athletes will receive the same medals, and, at the end, a trophy will be awarded to the winning nation of the European
Championships across all seven sports.” It would also be fair to say it might not mean as much to athletics to be part of the inaugural concept as some of their counterparts. After all, events such as the European Athletics Championships attract considerable audience figures and generate interest further afield than the continent. Hansen accepts that but claims featuring at the Championships will bring a new dimension to his sport, particularly as top-level athletes will compete in Berlin, which could not be said of the European Games. “They are two very different beasts,” the Norwegian said of comparisons with the European Games. “There is over 450 years of history and heritage between the individual championships, and it is the European Federations who retain control of this event. “Our sports have come together based on their existing power to attract broadcast viewers, and this will be boosted by bringing them together in one economically sustainable and exciting event held every four years.”
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Top: The last European Athletics Championships were held in Amsterdam. Photo: Getty Images Above: Germany will have big hopes of home gold. Photo: Getty Images
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CYCLING
Cycling is another sport which already has a prominent profile across Europe, but this is truer for some disciplines than others. Track and road cycling, for example, is more popular than mountain biking and BMX but all four will feature in the Scottish city. European Cycling Union President Rocco Cattaneo is confident the European
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Championships can help bridge that divide. “For cycling this is a great opportunity, especially for the road races for the elite category, part of the UEC calendar only from 2016,” he said. “BMX, mountain biking and track will certainly benefit in terms of visibility. Yes, cycling is very popular in Europe but being part of such a big event, with great media attention, can further increase the popularity of our sport. “The organisers have been promoting this event alongside the continental confederations for about two years. “Of course, we are talking about a new concept of European championships, which, like all new things, must be understood by the public. In the specific case of cycling, our fans have perfectly understood the Glasgow
Top: Mountain bike competition will take place at Cathkin Braes. Photo: Getty Images Above: The road race at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Photo: Getty Images
2018 format and from the feedback we are still receiving we are sure that the cycling audience will be great.” Cattaneo is also confident the
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concept is here to stay and will only continue to grow. “After this first edition we are sure that more sports will be part of the next editions,” he said.
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GOLF
Golf, despite its rich tradition and history, is the new kid on the block when it comes to this type of multi-sport event. Having made a successful Olympic debut on the greens of Rio de Janeiro in 2016, the sport is now branching out into other sectors and being included on the European Championships represents another step in that process. “It presents us with an exciting opportunity to showcase golf to different audiences and in a
different context,” European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley says. “Uniting the existing European Championships of the seven sports brings a global focus to these events, and we are fortunate that golf has been included as the only new event. “I think it’s a coup for golf to be involved.” That may be the case but eyebrows have been raised over the scheduling of this new event in the middle of a busy period. Two major tournaments - the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and the US PGA Championship - taking place at the same time means some of the top European names will be over in the United States rather than at Gleneagles. “The reality is that the global golf calendar is very congested, but one of our main objectives as
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Top: The event will not attract huge names such as Rory McIlroy due to calendar clashes. Photo: Getty Images Above: Laura Davies is among big names confirmed. Photo: Getty Images
an organisation is to provide increased playing opportunities for our members,” Pelley said. “The two weeks of the European Championships cross over with the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and the US PGA Championship, so there are no
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clear dates on which to schedule the golf tournament, but this is a wonderful opportunity to be part of a multi-sport event, to represent your country and to call yourself a European Champion, which will be exciting for many male and female golfers.”
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GYMNASTICS
While four cycling disciplines will be showcased in Glasgow, only artistic gymnastics is part of the European Championships. Artistic is considered the flagship gymnastics event and is one of two which feature at the Olympics, along with rhythmic. European Union of Gymnastics President Farid Gayibov believes other forms of the sport can one day join the European Championships family. “Artistic gymnastics is our strongest and priority-driven gymnastics discipline worldwide, and, at the same time, the competitions in this discipline bring more profit,” Gayibov said. “I think artistic gymnastics events, being part of multi-sport championships, will have more visibility, as well as be attended and watched by more viewers which is actually our goal. I hope this project will be successful and other gymnastics disciplines will be a part of these Championships some day in future as well.” The Azeri official said he was “very closely connected” with the
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first European Games, held in Baku, the capital city of his home country, and claimed the events were “completely different” despite obvious comparisons and even initial competition between organisers of the two multi-sport competitions. “The European Games is one major event while Glasgow 2018 unites existing European Championships in the sports disciplines concerned,” said Gayibov. “The Games were held under the patronage of the European Olympic Committees and involved 20 sports. “The overall organisation was carried out according to the Olympic system and its principles and by adhering to the Olympic Movement. “It is a very good idea to combine culture of several sports disciplines under one event, and this is actually the concept of the Olympic Games. “But here we have only participants from European countries and only a certain number of sports are represented in the Championships. We will not have common Athletes’ Village but we will have a very good atmosphere in general. “In my opinion, it will leave some legacy and may be a good model for future events.”
Top: Only artistic gymnastics will be part of the programme. Photo: Getty Images Above: Max Whitlock, an ambassador for Glasgow 2018, won world pommel horse gold in the city in 2015. Photo: Getty Images
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ROWING
Top: Rowing is hoping to increase the profile of its European Championships. Photo: Getty Images Above: The sport has pointed to the importance of the deal with the European Broadcasting Union. Photo: Getty Images
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European Rowing chairman Ryszard Stadniuk agreed with the sentiments expressed by many of his counterparts but warned all was not rosy in the European Championships garden. Stadniuk, who won an Olympic bronze medal for Poland in the coxed four at Moscow 1980, said there were obstacles for the event moving forward. He was keen to stress there were no guarantees the European Championships would cement itself in an already-packed global sporting landscape, citing the calendar and a future location as his principle concerns. “I see it as a good model that should be carried on in the future, but it will be a great challenge for at least two reasons,” he said. “Firstly, finding a date which will work for all participating sports and also finding a city or cities which will meet requirements of all the sports.” Stadniuk also admitted the organisation would have liked to have seen the European Championships have a “much higher profile” at this stage but was generally positive on the impact being part of the event @insidethegames
would have for rowing. “It is a fantastic opportunity for rowing to be part of this multi-sport event of the best of European sport,” he said. “It will bring our sport to a much wider audience: both live spectator and television numbers and increase the exposure of athletes helping make them more ‘household names’. Europe is really the birthplace of rowing and we are keen to grow our fan base especially among non-rowers. “The engagement of the European Broadcasting Union in this project is the best guarantee that huge numbers of spectators will follow the competitions across all seven sports. “For rowing to be partnered with other sports as athletics and cycling - sports that are very popular across the world - is a huge chance to grow the popularity of rowing in countries where sport is a big part of the culture but where rowing perhaps hasn’t had the exposure previously for historical or cultural reasons. “There are many countries in Europe where our sport is not so well known, and they don’t have a long tradition as they do in the UK.”
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SWIMMING
European Aquatics Federation President Paolo Barelli represents a sport whose stature is only arguably superseded by athletics on the seven-strong European Championships programme. Yet the Italian is a firm believer in the together stronger mantra, claiming being partnered with six other sports can offer additional benefits and will help their flagship event reach a previously untapped audience. “Having staged the first edition
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back in 1926, the European Aquatics Championships are one of the best-established continental showcases in sport today,” Barelli said. “Still, we think there is room for more. “We are strengthening each other by promoting this multisport meet on our social media channels. Seven sports are doing their utmost on the road to Glasgow and Berlin, so the reach and the impact is seven times bigger than if you do this stuff on your own. “The project of linking together the European Championships of different sports, under the same umbrella in term of media and TV coverage, has the advantage of raising awareness among sports enthusiasts towards such different disciplines. “Even though LEN’s premium event might be regarded as a
Top: Swimming medallists at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Photo: Getty Images Above: Scottish star Ross Murdoch is a Glasgow 2018 ambassador. Photo: Getty Images
best-selling product on its own, we are aware of the tough challenges we face in the sport market. “With the other six European Federations we are convinced that the upcoming 12 days will offer much more benefits for all stakeholders than if anyone had done its own event alone.” Barelli joined others in expressing his view that the model being presented in Glasgow and Berlin does have a future and revealed the
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host of the 2022 edition would be unveiled sooner rather than later. “We can’t wait for the start and strongly believe that it’s going to surpass our expectations and prove that this model is working really well,” he said. “We are already in talks with several cities which are interested to stage the 2022 edition. I hope that the event’s success will further boost those interests and soon we can announce our next host.”
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TRIATHLON
Top: Strathclyde Country Park will host the triathlon. Photo: Getty Images Above: The European Triathlon Union “immediately” decided to join the event. Photo: Getty Images
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Forgive the pun, but triathlon is in a similar boat to rowing at the European Championships. The sport does not glean as much coverage as the likes of swimming, cycling and athletics and the event in Glasgow offers the chance to change that. European Triathlon Union President Renato Bertrandi is all too aware of this. “It will represent for triathlon a great opportunity for getting a much bigger exposure for our sport compared with our traditional stand-alone European Championships,” he said. “We are really happy to be part of an event that, apart from the competitions, will give our athletes the possibility to meet and exchange experiences with athletes from other disciplines. “It is a great honour to be there with European Federations that have a much longer history than us. @insidethegames
“We highly respect the other sports and having these disciplines within the Games, will show that our athletes, in some cases, are there alongside the best of those in other sports.” Bertrandi, fully-versed in new challenges having taken the helm at the ETU back in 2012 after a no confidence vote in the governing body’s previous board, is convinced the concept will be a success. “When it was presented to us we immediately decided to join,” he said. “In our view it is a great way to create an event that, combining several sports, will benefit as an economy of scale. Some European Federations are in fact using this model for their national Championships to reduce costs and to increase visibility. “All our federations are aware of this event and we are expecting the best athletes to be part of the European Championships. Our world is thrilled about it and I am sure that a huge part of our amateur athletes in Glasgow, all over Europe and indeed worldwide, will be watching the TV coverage.”
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Let the FUN begin
From Korean peace to esports via kabaddi, sepak takraw and a registration plate lottery, this year’s Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang promises to be another fun edition of sport’s second biggest multi-sport event. Nick Butler reports.
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y very first trip on insidethegames duty was for what could turn out to be the final edition of the Asian Youth Games in Nanjing in 2013. Aside from enjoying a first glimpse of sports politics and how it really functions, I was struck by the sheer diversity found in one continent. Sitting at breakfast in the Olympic Council of Asia hotel, you could find yourself sharing a table with someone from the Arab world, the far east, the south-east, the Indian sub-continent or the ex-Soviet bloc. A hotchpotch of different languages, cultures and priorities, sporting or otherwise. This diverse group of 45 countries comes together for an Asian Games which is this year featuring 40 sports and 10,000 athletes from August 18 until September 2. This athletes total is only 1,544 fewer than for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Asia, which is currently in a run of hosting three successive Olympics in Pyeongchang, Tokyo and Beijing, is seen as the haven for sport event hosting in comparison with apathy from Europe and elsewhere. In reality, though, most of these events are reserved for East Asia and the wider continent has just as many challenges as the rest of the world. Hanoi in Vietnam was the original host for the 2018 Asian Games, before withdrawing citing “economic pressures” and being replaced by Jakarta and the city of Palembang 600 kilometres and a Java Sea-crossing away to the north. The Asian Youth Games appear to be no more while the Asian Beach Games has switched from a two to a four-year cycle. The OCA response is generally to sacrifice ideology for pragmatism.
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Asian sporting events are not accompanied by great philosophies and messages about “sport for peace” or “sport for wider society”. They simply turn-up, do what they have to do to ensure the event works, and then leave again. There were concerns about the ballooning number of sports on this year’s programme, for instance. In a stroke of inspiration, the OCA responded by grouping together different sports under one banner to reduce the total number without actually removing any. Jujitsu, kurash, pencak silat, sambo and wushu are all grouped together as “martial arts”, while dragon boat racing has joined with canoeing, skateboarding with roller skating and soft tennis with tennis. Genius. Say what you like about the transparency, accountability and consistency of the OCA, but they know how to get a job done. A unified Korean team provides a classic example. The International Olympic Committee leaped upon the opportunity to better promote the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang by masterminding a unified North and South Korean march at the Opening Ceremony as well as a joint team in women’s ice hockey. This involved changing the rules to allow a larger Korean squad to participate than those allocated to other countries. The OCA have also welcomed calls for a joint team but have played a less vocal role and have made absolutely clear that no extra athletes will be tolerated. North and South Korea are each desperate to win as many medals as possible as independent nations, so will not jeopardise their chances by forming unified teams in their strongest events. This has ruled-
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out many potential collaborations in sports such as table tennis and left dragon boat racing as the unlikely latest forum for Korean peace. Women’s basketball and three lightweight rowing events have now followed suit. The Asian Games, like the Olympics that preceded it, have served as a platform to showcase growing Korean unity over recent months. But, as the OCA appear to accept, it is nothing more than a platform and they are not getting carried away over it. It is more good fortune than anything else this year that sport has showcased inter-Korean peace rather than conflict. The OCA’s pragmatic approach seems to be rubbing off on organisers in Indonesia too. “We have several measures in place for Jakarta,” said Organising Committee chairman Erick Thohir, when asked about the potential pitfall of congestion. “We will use a special Asian Games lane for all official vehicles, and they will have a police and army escort and also police on the roads ahead to control the traffic. “We will also use the toll road and the busway and will be operating an ‘odd and even’ system for private cars on a daily basis, with certain roads only accessible for cars with a registration
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plate ending in an even number, and other roads for cars with an odd number. “In order to reduce the traffic in the evenings, schools will be changing their hours and will be open from 6.30am to 2pm, and we are encouraging offices to do the same.” Making children go to school earlier and sanctioning people based on the final digit of their registration plate would be considered controversial by many, but Thohir hopes that it will reduce traffic by 20 to 30 per cent to manageable levels. In Palembang, there are fewer concerns due to the existence of the new LRT - Light Rail Transit - from the airport direct to Jakabaring Sports City which will accommodate all the venues and the Athletes’ Village. The geographical proximity between the two host cities - not to mention two islands provides another challenge. “It is the first time for Asia and the OCA that the Asian Games has two co-host cities,” concedes Thohir. “But this is a trend in modernday sport, because even the FIFA World Cup will be in three countries in 2026 - United States, Canada and Mexico. “It is difficult for one city to host everything,
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Main: The mascots of the 2018 Asian Games are promising a fun event. Photo: Getty Images Top: Erick Thohir is overseeing preparations. Photo: Getty Images Below: Bright lights in Jakarta as the capital prepares for the Games. Photo: Getty Images
and the OCA has been very supportive in this because we want the two cities to serve the athletes as best they can. “Also, it is a good opportunity to promote Palembang, which has its own unique culture and food. Indonesia is not only about Bali and Jakarta. I am proud of my team and I am confident it will be successful.”
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The velodrome in Jakarta has been renovated. Photo: Getty Images
So, what do we have to look forward to? Aside from 32 of 33 sports on the Tokyo 2020 programme - surfing being the only exception - we also have a smattering of additional disciplines which are popular in a certain part of the continent. This includes kabaddi, a team sport originating in Southern India which blends British bulldog, wrestling and rugby without a ball, and sepak takraw, a version of kick volleyball native to Southeast Asia. There will be no cricket on the programme this time around but bowling, bridge, jet ski, paragliding and squash are others present. “All the major renovation and construction work is complete, but there are still a few finishing touches required in five or six venues,” adds Thohir. “The one we are pushing most is squash at the Gelora Bung Karno sports complex. It will be finished 100 per cent by the end of July. Yes, that is only 18 days before the Opening Ceremony on August 18, but the venue facility will be of a high standard. We are comfortable we will deliver the venues on time with good quality. “We are very proud of the GBK sports complex, not only the renovation of the main stadium and other venues such as the Aquatics Centre but also because we are creating a lot of public space and parks. This will be one of the legacies of the Asian Games - the sports facilities and also the parks for the public to exercise and
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has been a major supporter. Photo: Getty Images
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to gather socially, even in the middle of a big city such as Jakarta. “This also applies to the venues for cycling, with the new velodrome, and the equestrian park, which is really beautiful. They both have a lot of public space around them for the people to use.” There are several other fascinating subplots. Top South Korea footballers, like Tottenham Hotspur star Son Heung-min, could break from their club commitments and compete at the Asian Games to avoid military service. We will also see the debut of esports at a major multisport event, where League of Legends, Starcraft II, Hearthstone, Pro Evolution Soccer and mobile games Clash Royale and Arena of Valor will feature as demonstration events. One of the things I enjoyed about the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon was covering some of the more unusual stories. We had Qatar forfeiting a women’s basketball match after they were barred from wearing a hijab, a Japanese swimmer expelled for stealing a camera, and an Indian boxer refusing to accept a bronze medal after some dodgy officiating. Expect plenty more of those. Anti-doping was another challenge four years ago. German company Professional Worldwide Controls have been appointed to carry out drug testing at the ground level this time around after also doing so at the European Games and last year’s World Athletics Championships in London. It had been hoped that the new International Testing Agency may perform this role, but the body will only be “present to supervise and oversee”. Will the locals get behind the Games? “The Indonesians love football and badminton, and we are expecting the atmosphere in the refurbished Istora Senayan badminton hall to be very special,” argues @insidethegames
Thohir. “The basketball will also be very popular, both 5x5 and 3x3. The martial arts programme includes pencak silat and we are expecting this to be well attended, especially by school students. We are also hopeful of winning medals in weightlifting. “The target for Indonesia is to win 16 gold medals and to finish in the top 10. At Incheon 2014 we won four gold medals.” The cheapest tickets will be $2 and the average will be $7 in a bid to be accessible for all. They went on sale from June 30. The operating budget is $470 million of which 83 per cent is from the Government and the rest from sponsors. A further $1.9 million is being spent on infrastructure, transportation and renovation. These numbers appear reasonable, if they are accurate. Thohir claims that hosting the Asian Games is “important for Indonesia, not only for sport but for culture, economic impact and tourism”. He adds: “It will contribute to the globalisation of Indonesia, national branding and characterbuilding. “We have a population of 260 million and an average age of 28, so we regard the Asian Games as an investment in human capital for the future. It is an opportunity to produce a new generation of young leaders and build the sports industry, sports environment and sports activities. We need to build sports around Indonesia, not only the economy.
Esports will take place as a demonstration. Photo: Getty Images
“We need to build the character of the nation and sport is one of the tools because it involves discipline and competitiveness.” It is hoped that the Asian Games could even pave the way for a 2032 Olympic bid. For the time being, though, organisers will settle for an event which highlights the diversity, pragmatism and enduring success of one of sport’s most enduring continental showpieces.
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Nick Butler speaks at the FISU Volunteer Leaders Academy in Kazan. Photo: FISU
THE NEXT GENERATION insidethegames’ very own Nick Butler flew to Russia to pass on his wisdom to the next generation of sport leaders. Here is how he found the experience.
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enjoyed a new experience last month when invited to present about sports journalism at an International University Sports Federation Volunteer Leaders Academy for students from 92 countries in Kazan. It was a good time to be in Russia, given how the World Cup started on our first day, and we were all taken to a Group B match between Australia and France on the second, which was excellent. The Academy was based in the sort of youth centre I had not seen since school trips in a beautiful village on the banks of the River Volga, a 30-minute drive from Kazan. It was surrounded by fortified dachas which, I was told, were largely holiday homes for the great and good of Russian society. Impressive facilities included a swimming pool, a gym, football pitches and tennis, basketball and volleyball courts. There was also a kilometre running loop which I had the misfortune to begin laps of at the same time as a student who was also an international triathlete.
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Cue a tough session for me which probably felt like the gentlest of warm-downs for him. It felt like being back at school in other ways, too. A loudspeaker permeated into every room each morning telling us to “get up and don’t be late”, which I couldn’t help but overhear despite not being an intended target. The gates were also shut each night at 11pm and it required Russian language as well as persuasive and begging skills to get back in again. “Nyet” was the usual reply. I was given 90 minutes to talk about the nuts and bolts of finding and writing stories as well as the rise of the internet and social media. To my surprise, FISU referred to me on Twitter as a “veteran” reporter which, given how I only graduated five years ago, served to suitably wind-up more grizzled colleagues. The powers-that-be even gave my speech its own hashtag #NickButler - for those interested in commenting on social media. I started with a quote from 1968 by the former chief justice of the
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United States Supreme Court, Earl Warren. “I always turn to the sports section first,” he said. “The sports page records people’s accomplishments, the front page has nothing but man’s failures.” “Is this a good message?” I ventured, to an assertive chorus of nods. “Well, I’m not sure it is,” I hesitantly countered to widespread bemusement. “If it was then there wouldn’t be much point in an organisation like insidethegames. “Look at all the bad news in sport today: doping, corruption, sexual abuse scandals, VAR controversies? And is it our job as journalists to act as cheerleaders or find out what is really going on?” I think I won a few of them around but was already feeling slightly put off by the sight of somebody fast asleep on the third row. “A challenge for any speaker at sporting meetings,” I was told afterwards. Volunteers gathered from across the world. Photo: FISU
Numerous sessions were held in Kazan. Photo: FISU
It was fun to then explain the ethics of “on” and “off record”, how taking a journalist for a drink can be mutually beneficial and how “fake news” can also be a label used to attack our best stories as well as being an accurate blemish on the profession. “Have you ever been sued?” I was asked. “Have you ever been threatened?” “What’s the best piece of gossip you’ve ever heard?” It just happened that I had heard a spectacular piece of gossip shortly before I spoke which, if I had given into temptation and divulged, could certainly have got me both sued and threatened. One of the best tellings-off I have ever had was from the communications director of a www.facebook.com/insidethegames
top sporting organisation who I now get on well with. I was being shouted at on the phone while standing between two television crews filming the nearby Duchess of Cambridge playing basketball at the Copper Box in London. “Stop galivanting around in the Olympic Park and sort this mess out,” I was ordered. I provided some examples of good and bad responses and found it impossible to resist the recent reaction from the International Olympic Committee to Sion’s 2026 Winter Games referendum defeat for the latter. I also asked the students to suggest ways to deal with a “crisis comms” situation. The example I chose, a diving pool that had turned green shortly before the start of an Olympic final, was surely too outrageous to happen in real life…
A good argument broke out about whether they should “play it straight” and simply apologise and delay the event until they were absolutely sure it was safe, or whether they should “spin” and insist the competition should go ahead, even if safety was not guaranteed, in order to minimise disruption. One group took an unorthodox approach and decided to use humour.
Lots of interesting discussions were held at the event. Photo: FISU
Much fun was had by those in attendance Photo: FISU
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“The Environmental Agency have given us the green light,” was their first response. “The water quality has taken a real dive… the atmosphere has declined, you can literally hear a pin drop…the lane swimmers are green with envy with the water colour change,” were others. This may seem a terrible answer and my instinctive reaction was that indeed it was. Then again, the actual answer of Rio 2016 communication director Mario Andrada
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A great atmosphere was formed by those attending. Photo: FISU
when this happened was that “chemistry is not an exact science” and it struck a chord. Can humour, obviously balanced with facts and contrition, sometimes be a good response? We also spoke extensively about the rise of the internet and social media. Does this make a reporter’s job easier or harder? I’m perhaps not the best person to answer as I was not around in the good old days of research in the local library and filing copy down a dodgy phoneline.
The crowd gathers to conclude the event. Photo: FISU
As with most topics, I think you could argue both ways. It is certainly easier now to access information and to research a www.facebook.com/insidethegames
story, although it is usually more beneficial picking up a phone the old fashioned way rather than relying on Google and Wikipedia. Being “scooped” by a rival also arguably matters less today because you can have your own story online in a matter of minutes rather than waiting for the next day’s newspaper. On the other hand, there is so much more pressure today in terms of producing stories quickly and constantly. In the 24-hour news cycle of today, there is barely any escape. A journalist today must also do so much more in a less-funded age. They must be comfortable videoing, tweeting, photographing and blogging as well as basic reporting and, when attending your event, you find half the time is spent helping the office writing other non-related stories. I was impressed by a lot of comments made from students who were less engrained in the “this is how things are done” mentality which so many in sport swear by. A presentation by a World Anti-Doping Agency expert received a test tube’s worth of questions. I was also quizzed about journalistic ethics and how we juggle commercial and editorial priorities. Even FISU received some queries about whether their commitments to sustainability and environmentalism is undermined - pardon the pun - by a major sponsorship deal with Norilsk Nickel Mining… It would be good if sporting leaders are open to the ideas of the next generation and genuinely consider their ideas about what needs to change. In the meantime, I am still awaiting my invitation to present again at October’s Olympism in Action Forum in Buenos Aires.
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When London called This year marks the 70th anniversary of the London 1948 Olympic Games. Philip Barker looks back on an event which helped the world move on from the horrors of war.
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hey would be forever known for the exploits of Dutch runner Fanny Blankers-Koen and a first Olympic gold medal for Czech Emil Zatopek. But, above all, the London Olympics of 1948 helped return the world to sporting normality after the devastating Second World War. There was no grand announcement of the host city, but discreet soundings had been taken even before the war had come to an
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end. When the International Olympic Committee’s Executive Board met in London in the summer of 1945, they decided on a postal ballot. The voting paper looked more like a permission slip for a school trip than a decision on the biggest sporting festival in the world. London was duly chosen. The Organising Committee was chaired by Lord Burghley, an Olympic champion at 400 metre hurdles at Amsterdam 1928. Others involved included Stanley Rous, a future President of FIFA, Sir Arthur Elvin, the boss of Wembley Stadium, and Billy Holt, later to lead the organisation of the 1956 Melbourne Games. As they recruited staff, a memo suggested a position for someone who it was felt had “some knowledge” of the athletic scene. His name? Harold Abrahams, 100m champion at the “Chariots of Fire” Paris Games in 1924. From their offices above the Army and Navy Stores in Victoria, Central London, the Organising Committee begged favours and borrowed for what became known as “Austerity Games”.
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Although peace had come, the world situation was far from clear. Germany and Japan were not invited. Soviet Russia stayed away and China meant their nationalists. A bitter civil war was unfolding in the giant Asian nation and the problem of two “Chinas” remained unresolved for the next 30 years. Even the passage of the Olympic flame was dogged by conflict. The organisers decided to undertake a Relay “after careful consideration that it would be of great symbolic value”. One newspaper, however, described it as an “antiquarian sham”. A bitter civil war was also raging in Greece at the time and it proved impossible for the designated high priestess to make her way from Athens to Olympia for the flamelighting ceremony. Instead, a local girl was drafted in and the flame itself was diverted to the nearby port of Katakolo, from where it was taken to Corfu on a Greek ship. HMS Whitesand Bay then transported the flame to the Italian port of Bari and it began its journey across Europe. It crossed into Switzerland and for the first
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time visited the Olympic headquarters in Lausanne. Pointedly, the route avoided Germany and eventually arrived at Calais. From there it was taken by HMS Bicester across the English Channel. Even that represented a bureaucratic triumph for Relay organiser Commander Bill Collins. Royal Navy chiefs had initially been none too keen to cooperate. The flame only arrived in Dover the night before the Opening Ceremony. There were huge crowds to greet chief petty officer Herbert “Chiefy’” Barnes as he came ashore. The flame promptly went out. “It was like a spring-loaded firework,” said Barnes. Although the Relay continued throughout the night, people came out to watch. An indication, perhaps, of how important the symbolism had become. In the meantime, the competitors were arriving in Britain. They included a huge contingent which sailed from the United States on SS America. The men were accommodated in military camps. The main centre was the Royal Air Force base in Uxbridge, approximately half-an-hour from Wembley Stadium. Most of the women were put up in hotels in Knightsbridge. Petrol rationing was still in force, so those who competed in the canoeing and rowing events held on the river at Henley stayed in the nearby town of High Wycombe. The official poster was everywhere. It featured a discus thrower in front of the Westminster clock tower which houses Big Ben. The hands of the clock were set to 4pm, the hour at which the Opening Ceremony would begin. This was held at Wembley on a glorious summer’s day. The entry of the Koreans was almost as poignant as that in Pyeongchang this year. Their flag was carried by 1936 marathon champion Sohn Kee-chung. It would have been a moment of immense national pride except that he had been forced to run in the colours of the occupying Japanese. The entry of the teams was described as a “march” and was very much more formal than today. “On arrival at their correct position, teams should ‘stand at ease,’” official instructions barked. “They should come to ‘attention’ only during the National Anthem, the formal Opening of the Games by the King and the www.facebook.com/insidethegames
taking of the Olympic Oath.’’ Flags had been provided for every nation, except for the hosts. It fell to Roger Bannister, later to achieve the first four minute mile but then working as a team assistant, to retrieve the situation. He rushed through a crowded Wembley car park to fetch a British flag from an official team vehicle and returned in the nick of time. The music was directed by Sir Malcolm Sargent, a popular conductor. Some of the instruments went out of tune in the heat and he later described the experience as “like taking a jellyfish for a walk”. The Olympic flame was borne into the stadium by John Mark, an athlete from Cambridge University who later became a doctor. He ran a full circuit before lighting what was by modern standards a tiny cauldron at the “tunnel’’ end. The Games were opened by King George VI, the official patron. He did so in full naval uniform. The announcement was greeted by a fanfare from trumpeters of the Household Cavalry. A 21-gun salute boomed from cannons placed just beneath Wembley’s twin towers. A few days after the Games began, representatives of each team made their way to Buckingham Palace to meet the King. The Royal Family returned the compliment by watching some of the events. Permission had been given for the cycling road race to take place in Windsor Great Park. The race was started by Prince Philip. There was no synthetic track for the athletics, only cinders. These were laid at the 11th hour because the owners of the stadium were determined that the lucrative greyhound
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races held there should not be disrupted more than absolutely necessary. When the rain came, conditions became ever-more testing. The great Czech runner Zatopek won gold in the 10,000m but lost out to Belgian Gaston Reiff in a mud-spattered 5,000m. Micheline Ostermayer of France won both discus and shot put titles and finished third in the high jump, but even her performance was upstaged by the great Dutch athlete BlankersKoen, better known to all as “Fanny”. Aged 30, she had been robbed of her prime by the war years. That she was written off by some pundits only served as motivation, as she completed the sprint double and won additional golds in the 80m hurdles and 4x100m relay. She was inevitably dubbed the “Flying Dutchwoman”. When she returned home, thousands turned out for her victory parade in an open top carriage. Main: London 1948 imagery is projected onto the Houses of Parliament. Photo: Getty Images Top: An equestrian athlete in action. Photo: Getty Images Bottom: Sweden celebrate football gold. Photo: Getty Images
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BADMINTON – RISING FURTHER! Badminton continues to prosper, with events and development remaining the essential pillars of the Badminton World Federation’s mandate – showcasing the sport at its sparkling best while also popularising grassroots badminton. Additionally, the international federation is committed to ensuring badminton’s integrity so athletes may compete in clean and fair competitions. BWF is pleased to highlight some recent significant achievements in these areas – events, development and integrity.
EVENTS: THE FIXED-HEIGHT SERVICE In May, the BWF membership approved the BWF Council’s proposal for a fixed-height service. The vote at the BWF Annual General Meeting achieved the two-thirds majority, with 177 votes out of 222 votes effecting this important change. Since March, BWF has been testing an Experimental Service Law (Fixed Height). It stipulates that “the whole of the shuttle shall be below 1.15 metres from the surface of the court at the instant of being hit by the server's racket”. A measuring instrument (at right) was introduced to assist service judges in officiating this new Law. This change is seen as an improvement over the previous service
rule which depended on the height of a player’s bottom rib which was sometimes difficult to determine. “The serve is an integral part of badminton. After detailed consultations with coaches from top badminton countries – and having tested the Experimental Service Law – we are confident that we have improved how the service laws are applied to ensure greater fairness,” said BWF President Poul-Erik Høyer. The BWF Council will continue testing until 10 December to determine if 1.15 metres is the correct height or if this should be adjusted. BWF will also consider how technology could support the implementation of the fixed-height service.
DEVELOPMENT: ONLINE SHUTTLE TIME; INNOVATIVE COACH EDUCATION In July, BWF launched an online module (at left) of its grassroots development programme, Shuttle Time, allowing participants to cover its theoretical aspects. Thereafter, they can complete their Shuttle Time training with a shorter face-to-face course on its practical elements. This individual approach reduces the requirement for attendance at a two-day course by blending online and face-to-face learning. *** Top coaches from 12 Asian countries strengthened their national badminton systems in June by attending the pilot programme for BWF's Level 3 Coach Education course. For five days in Malaysia, leading coach educators worked with the coaches and are now following up with them on long-term projects to improve badminton structures in the coaches’ countries. This innovative format focuses on a coach’s pivotal role in a player pathway that can help talented athletes achieve high-level performance. Apart from the standard technical, tactical and physical training, coaches are being challenged to develop the unique attributes of elite players.
INTEGRITY: STRENGTHENING THE STRUCTURE BWF is continually improving its multi-pronged approach to securing badminton’s integrity framework. This includes: •
Introducing independent expertise (legal, medical, scientific and anti-doping) to hear all doping and ethics-related cases.
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Utilising technology to protect against match-manipulation threats, with a state-of-the-art bet-monitoring system to identify and flag irregular activity in real time.
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Investing in technology to systematically record and analyse information and guide investigations.
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Engaging expert tournaments.
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Enhancing the Code of Conduct in Relation to Betting, Wagering and Irregular Match Results.
investigators
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In May, three members of BWF’s new External Judicial Experts Group banned two Malaysian players from competing in badminton for 15 and 20 years respectively for breaching the BWF Code of Conduct in Relation to Betting, Wagering and Irregular Match Results. This was the first case of its kind in the sport.
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Top Left: The Opening Ceremony at Wembley Stadium. Photo: Getty Images Bottom Left: An identity card for one of the athletes. Photo: Getty Images Below: Fanny Blankers-Koen was a huge star of the Games. Photo: Getty Images
Close to the stadium was the Empire Pool, now known as the SSE Arena. The swimming and diving events took place there. Among the swimmers was Monique Berlioux, later to become director of the IOC. When the aquatic events were complete, the pool was converted to house a boxing ring. Most of the competitions took place in, close to or around London. The furthest of the satellite venues was Torbay in the south-west of England where the sailing regatta was staged. They even had their own flame, brought by an additional Relay from Wembley. Among those to sail was Durward Knowles of The Bahamas who later became their first
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Olympic champion and continued to sail at elite level into his seventies. The equestrian competitors headed to Aldershot. The Tweseldown race course was used for the cross-country and also hosted modern pentathlon. One sport had already started before the flame was lit. The preliminary football matches took place on club grounds including the modest homes of amateur teams such as Dulwich Hamlet and Ilford, as well as larger grounds such as Highbury, White Hart Lane and Craven Cottage. Great Britain were in the capable hands of Matt Busby, manager of Manchester United’s FA Cup winning team in 1948. The squad was drawn from the amateur ranks and included Denis Kelleher, an Irishman who played his football for Barnet and had escaped from a prison camp during the war. The hosts reached the semi-finals and the powerful Swedes beat Yugoslavia in the final at Wembley to win gold. They were electrified by Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm. The trio were destined to make their fortunes in Italy where they were known as “Gre-No-Li”. The tournament marked the end of an era. From 1952, until eligibility rules were changed in the 1980s, it would be dominated by Eastern European nations. The other major team tournament featured the newly independent India and a proud nation rejoiced when they continued a winning streak in hockey which dated back to 1928. The Victoria and Albert Museum was also an unlikely venue for the Games. Organisers there @insidethegames
were the last to award medals for artistic competition. A special concert was staged at the Royal Albert Hall in honour of the Olympic Movement. At Wembley, there was an exhibition of lacrosse. A team from Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York even paid their own expenses. In those days, the Games closed with team show jumping in the stadium, and this was won by Mexico. Television rights for the Games now command billions, but in 1948, the BBC were asked to pay the princely sum of 1000 guineas, approximately £1,050. For the first time, the official film was to be in colour. “The Glory of Sport”, a title borrowed from the wording of the Olympic Oath, was produced by Castleton Knight for the Rank organization. The cameramen had a uniform of
their own and were dressed in white jackets with red berets, leading to descriptions of them as “one of the smartest turnouts ever worn by cameramen”. Incredibly, the film was premiered little more than a fortnight after the Games themselves had come to an end. The ceremonial Olympic flag was received by the Lord Mayor of London. In those days, the city which had just staged the Games kept it for the next four years. The words of Lord Burghley were displayed on the scoreboard “The Olympic spirit which has tarried here awhile, sets forth once more. May it prosper throughout the world, safe in the keeping of all those who have felt its noble impulse in this great festival of sport”. The 1948 Games were short on many things but one thing they did not lack was the true Olympic spirit.
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MIKE ROWBOTTOM CHIEF FEATURE WRITER, INSIDETHEGAMES
It’s good to share Glasgow and Berlin will become the latest cities to co-host a major sporting extravaganza, as Mike Rowbottom reflects.
A
mong the key stated aims of the first multi-sport European Championships which will be held in parallel in Glasgow and Berlin is the creation of “a strong new brand on the world stage”, increased television audiences and enhanced sponsorship opportunities. This new venture, due to be quadrennial, is looking like the European equivalent of the IOC’s recent “win-win-win” scenario. Athletics is taking place in the historic Berlin Olympic Stadium that held the 1936 Games and the 2009 International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships, and which annually presents a meeting that features in the World Challenge series, the second international tier below the IAAF Diamond League. You couldn’t get much better than that, especially now that the centre of Berlin is also being adapted into a fan zone that will feature medal ceremonies and road running events. Meanwhile, a series of unquestionably suitable venues are being employed in Scotland to accommodate the six other sports that have hitched their wagon to this star of an idea swimming at Glasgow’s Tollcross International Swimming Centre, diving at Edinburgh’s Royal Commonwealth Pool, the new mixed team golf at Gleneagles…. It remains to be seen whether this fouryearly multi-sport variant for European sports will become more geographically concentrated in future years. Part of the reason for the current configuration was the fact that the European Athletics Championships were already due to be hosted in Berlin, and similarly the European Aquatics Championships in Glasgow. What one gains in having a series of events close together, at least for those physically present, is that intangible “buzz” of excitement. Being in a city where the Olympics or
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Berlin and Glasgow will share the European Championships action. Photo: Getty Images
Commonwealth Games are being held can be unforgettable. London in 2012 - same familiar streets and underground stations, but it all felt energised and different. I personally will never forget the first day of action at the 2000 Sydney Olympics - was it the people around me who were excited, or was it me? It felt like everyone had been suddenly lifted on a wave of exhilaration. Such moments cost years of time and huge amounts of money. But they are extraordinary. These inaugural multi-sport European Championships have something of a pioneering feel to them in terms of their willingness to trust a concept that goes beyond geographical boundaries. Of course they will not be the first big sporting event to be shared, although this model has been pursued most conspicuously at elite level by football, with European Championships (Poland, Ukraine check) and World Cups (Japan and South Korea in 2002) being spread effectively between different countries. Such an arrangement gives sporting events a profoundly different dynamic - the local buzz factor is dissipated (check), but there is a corresponding sense of a common purpose. And the thing is, for most people, once a big sporting event gets underway it doesn’t really matter where it’s being held. For the television audience, what matters is what happens, and those present are no more than sound effects enhancing their viewer experience. As a television viewer of the recent FIFA World Cup in Russia, for instance, I was the
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same as everyone else - the different venues were just names; a series of differently configured and expensive new stadiums were simply the means of answering urgent questions - “Can Germany get a win here to stay in the World Cup? Can Harry Kane stay top in the race for the Golden Boot?” Shortly after earning election as European Athletics President in 2015, Svein Arne Hansen spoke enthusiastically about the prospect of his sport playing its part in the first multi-sport European Championships that were already in their formative stages. “It’s really a good idea and it will increase for sure the media attention, the spectator attention, and the audiences around this in the future,” he said. Asked how the synergy between Glasgow and Berlin might work, Hansen added: “I think it’s more a television thing because they’re trying to show [it on] the television, and the television viewer will not really see if it’s Glasgow or Berlin.” Central Place Theory is the term used to explain the economic advantages of grouping similar shops or enterprises despite their apparent rivalry. Attraction of customers to an area means greater gains overall. The paradox here is that events such as this multi-sport European Championships can reap the benefits of such a common cause without even needing to be in the same street, or city, or country… Of course what these Championships now need is a motto along the lines of the Olympic version of “Citius, Altius, Fortius”. “Greater than the sum of its parts” might work well …
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