SportAccord Convention Magazine 2014

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The world’s leading source of independent news and information about the Olympic and Paralympic Movement.

SportAccord Convention 2014

LA 84 to Sochi 2014, how the Olympics has changed over the last 30 years Especially produced for the SportAccord International Convention 2014 in Belek/Antalya, Turkey.

The European Olympic Committee has long had the vision of a continental Games for Europe and they entrusted the delivery of this vision to Azerbaijan when the First European Games was awarded to the city of Baku in December of 2012.

The countdown is now on until the Opening Ceremony on June 12th 2015.

The Games will open at Baku’s new multi-purpose 65,000 seat stadium and the First European Games promises to be an event that Azerbaijan and the whole of Europe can be proud of – an event that inspires young people and leaves a long term legacy of positive change in local communities, across Azerbaijan and the continent for sport, business, investment, tourism and events.

The mission of the First European Games is to deliver a Games that unifies people across Europe in a passionate celebration of sport. The largest multi-sport event in the history of Azerbaijan will involve more than 6000 competitors, from all 49 Olympic nations of Europe, competing across 19 sports.

Baku is investing in 20 major new and refurbished venues, providing iconic locations and world-class facilities for the athletes of Europe and young people in Azerbaijan, and a new world class sporting centre for the NOCs and athletes of Europe and beyond for decades to come.

History in the making the First European Games

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The First European Games will take place in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan in June 2015. All 49 National Olympic Committees of Europe will participate in the Games – more than 6,000 athletes will compete in 20 new or refurbished competition venues, across 19 sports

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baku2015.com

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Contents Published: April 2014 by Dunsar Media Company Limited Editor: Duncan Mackay Managing Director: Sarah Bowron Commercial Director: Dominique Gill Project Coordinator: Lauren Mattera Design: Elliot Willis Willis Design Associates Pictures: Getty Images Staff headshots: Karen Kodish Print: www.csfprint.com

Introduction

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Duncan Mackay

A Hollywood beginning

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Faster, higher, stronger: How the sports have fared since LA 84

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David Owen

Duncan Mackay, Nick Butler, Mike Rowbottom, Emily Goddard, Gary Anderson, Paul Osborne

Putin’s Games 32 Duncan Mackay

Olympics’ Harvard 35 Duncan Mackay

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Making waves 36

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.

Duncan Mackay

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. © and Database Right 2014 Dunsar Media Company Limited All rights reserved.

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Duncan Mackay

30 years of memories 38 Photo gallery

Bach to the future

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“O brave new world” 44 Louisa Gummer

Soviet break-up 48 Nick Butler

“A passionate celebration” 52 Duncan Mackay

Ready for the spotlight 55 Duncan Mackay

A winter Olypmics in Doha...

How will the future look? 56 Mike Rowbottom

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DUNCAN MACKAY EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

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nother year gone, another SportAccord Convention here. Last year we gathered in St Petersburg where election fever was beginning to take a grip. There were five elections going on at the time, unprecedented in the history of the Olympic Movement.

The results of these various elections are already shaping the future of the Movement, the ripples of which could be felt for years to come. At the top, of course, Thomas Bach has replaced Jacques Rogge as President of the International Olympic Committee. In this latest insidethegames’ magazine for SportAccord Convention, I assess the early impact made by Bach, who in the opinion of most experts cut an impressive figure during Sochi 2014, another hugely successful Games.

We also take a look at how Marius Vizer is reshaping SportAccord following his election to take over from Hein Verbruggen at the corresponding meeting last year ahead of Bernard Lapasset. He is working closely with other key figures within the Olympic Movement, most notably Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad AlSabah at the Association of National Olympic Committees, an intriguing prospect which could

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have far-reaching consequences.

But we are using this year’s magazine to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and what has happened to the Movement since then. Those Games have proved pivotal in the IOC’s development.

It is hard to believe now but back then there were real fears about the future of the Olympics. Bedevilled by boycotts, fears over how financially sustainable they were, lack of bidders, it really did feel to some that it was an institution that had run its course.

Enter Peter Ueberroth, a successful but little known travel executive who was heading the Organising Committee. He created a committee of over 150 members, mostly business people and entrepreneurs, to generate ideas, opportunities and solve problems. His aggressive recruiting of sponsors for the 1984 Olympics is credited as the genesis for the current Olympic sponsorship programme which has helped turn the IOC into the financial juggernaut that it is today.

David Owen, insidethegames’ chief columnist, has spoken to Ueberroth about those Games, which generated a $228 million profit, and were dubbed the “Bonanza Olympics”, and hears his fascinating story. It is, trust me, a “must read” for anyone interested in the Olympic Movement.

Louisa Gummer, our social media manager, has used it as an opportunity to examine how technology has impacted upon the Olympics in the last 30 years. You will be amazed at how much progress has been made in what is a relatively short period.

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Our team of writers have also interviewed key figures in every sport - summer and winter - involved in the Games since 1984, to find out how they think they have evolved since. It is a compelling study.

It will be interesting to see how the Olympic Movement looks in 2044 and insidethegames’ chief feature writer Mike Rowbottom has got his crystal ball out to have a look.

The one thing you can be sure of is that insidethegames will be here to share the journey.

If you have enjoyed this year’s edition of our SportAccord Convention magazine then why not visit www.insidethegames.biz to check out our website. Unlike other publications, all our content is free to view and there is no password to enter.

Duncan Mackay Editor

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A Hollywood beginning It seems hard to believe now but 30 years ago the Olympic Movement was in big financial trouble and beset by boycotts. Enter little-known travel agent Peter Ueberroth, organiser of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The rest, as they say, is history.

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s sports leaders gather in Antalya, the Olympic Movement is well established as the most powerful, and one of the best-resourced, sports organisations the world has seen. But it has not always been that way.

Thirty years ago, political pressure and inept commercial management had weakened it to the point where its very existence was under threat. What then enabled the Five Rings to check out of intensive care and embark on the path to complete recovery? A few things, but one of the most efficacious tonics was without doubt the unexpected success of the Games whose 30th anniversary arrives this summer: Los Angeles 1984.

In the run-up to the SportAccord International Convention, insidethegames was privileged to be granted an extended interview by the man

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Photo: Tony Duffy/ Getty Images

chiefly responsible for Tinseltown’s unlikely Olympic triumph. Peter Ueberroth’s personal Olympic odyssey took him from the lobby of a bank where he opened an account with $1,000 of his own money to the cover of Time magazine. As a plot line, it might have been scripted by Hollywood. In the annals of sports business management, it is the equivalent of Diego Maradona’s virtuoso performance - OK, minus the Hand of God incident - at the 1986 FIFA World Cup, or perhaps the barefoot Abebe Bikila winning the Olympic marathon in 1960 in Rome.

LA 84 is remembered first and foremost as the private enterprise Games. Yet with much of 1978 spent haggling over whether the International Olympic Committee was really prepared for the Games to be held in a city not willing to accept responsibility for any deficit,

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this did not at first have the look of a story destined for a happy ending. Still less so when, in January 1980, the Carter administration in Washington gave the Soviet Union a month to withdraw from Afghanistan. If it did not, the United States would boycott that summer’s Olympic Games due to be held in Moscow.

The boycott by the US and more than 60 other countries, of course, went ahead. From this point, it was clear that Ueberroth, a successful but obscure travel industry executive by now ensconced as President of Los Angeles 1984, would face as big a battle to head off a tit-for-tat boycott by the Eastern Bloc as to raise sufficient funds from private companies to break even. This at a time when, as Kevan Gosper, a long-time Australian IOC member, has written, “a financially viable Olympic Games was an aberration in the history of the Olympics”.

Ueberroth is one of very few Americans who was in the then Soviet capital around the time of the Games, although he says he “politely respected our country’s wishes” and did not attend any events.

“The IOC,” he says, “respected our efforts and respected what our challenge was, to present an Olympic Games in a private manner, and were kind and didn’t paint us with the Carter boycott... They understood that this was going to be a difficult task at best and that the worst thing would be to have no Games.”

As he points out early in the interview, not only did Los Angeles 1984 get no Government money, it received no charitable donations either - though the Torch Relay, discussed later, raised money for other charities. Ueberroth explains that, having studied prior Olympics, such as the Montreal 1976 Games, which left behind a large burden of debt, it was noticed that they had “a second hit”: charitable donations to hospitals and the like “went way down” because the money was donated to the Olympic Games. “So we thought to do it as a not-for-profit which does not accept donations.”

When I ask him to nominate Los Angeles 1984’s first big commercial breakthrough, he talks me through three.

What he calls a “coordinated effort” by Japan’s Dentsu delivered three or four “terrific” sponsors. Fuji, the photographic company, turned into a particularly valued supporter of the Games.

The Coca-Cola deal was also very important, not only for its dollar amount. “They realised we had developed a plan to have many fewer corporate sponsors,” Ueberroth says. “So every www.facebook.com/insidethegames

Above: LA 84 President Peter Ueberroth and IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch at the opening ceremony of the Los Angeles 1984 Games.

Photo: Courtesy of LA84 Foundation

sponsor would have exclusivity for a category.”

Writing in The Times in February 1984, David Miller, the eminent Olympic journalist, noted that: “By restricting sponsorship to 31 companies…Ueberroth has gained maximum benefit from General Motors, IBM, Fuji, Levi Strauss, Xerox and the rest, with an average commitment of £2.8 million.”

To put this into some sort of context, the former IOC marketing director Michael Payne wrote in Olympic Turnaround, his indispensable book on the business side of the Olympics, that Montreal “attracted the support of 628 companies, with 42 official sponsors paying an average of C$50,000 each and generating a total of C$5 million in cash and another C$12 million in value in kind (products and services provided free) - just two per cent of the total receipts”. Lake Placid, host of the 1980 Winter Olympics, “could only generate $26.5 million in cash and $30 million in value in kind from some 200 companies”.

And then there was the deal with ABC for exclusive rights to broadcast Los Angeles 1984 in the United States, the Games’ home market.

At $225 million, this was a hefty increase from the $85 million paid by NBC for US rights to the Moscow Games, and Ueberroth says it “set a standard for other negotiations”.

Among the other television agreements reached, incidentally, was a US$10.6 million deal for the Australian rights with Rupert Murdoch’s Network 10. “Murdoch did the deal @insidethegames

himself directly,” Ueberroth remembers, adding: “He has been a good friend since. He was the only guy I dealt with.”

The lucrative deal with ABC though was one of the key areas where the worlds of commerce and politics collided for Los Angeles 1984. This was because of clauses in the agreement that would have triggered some form of refund in the event of a substantial boycott or disappointing ratings, or for that matter out-and-out cancellation. As Ueberroth suggests, this element of protection might have been one of the reasons why the fee was so high. “There was no charity on either side,” he says. But it must have made the games of political brinkmanship that continued right up until June 1984 particularly nerve-racking.

Moscow pulled out of the Games on May 8, just as the Torch Relay was getting under way.

Ueberroth recalls that this was at least convenient because he was with Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC President. When the Relay started, Samaranch remarked that it was raining, “but in France that’s lucky”. Says Ueberroth: “It was raining like heck on our parade there.”

Because as Ueberroth puts it, “We couldn’t use our State Department”, Los Angeles 1984 had developed its own liaison network around the world. They were known as envoys. When the USSR’s boycott announcement came, they moved into action. Says Ueberroth: “They were everywhere within 24 hours.”

The Los Angeles 1984 President himself acted

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as the envoy to Cuba. “Fidel Castro was a baseball pitcher. He loved sport. He received me very well,” he tells me. “It was a close decision.

We even agreed to house the baseball team in my home because security was an issue. We tried every darn thing. In the end the economic lever the Soviet Union had, he couldn’t stand up to it. He told me the whole country would stand still when Cuba went to play the US in Dodger Stadium.” Cuba’s absence deprived the great Cuban heavyweight boxer Teófilo Stevenson of the chance to win an unprecedented fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal.

There was better news from China, however.

Ueberroth still remembers being woken up by a 3am phone call telling him that a full contingent of Chinese athletes would attend. This first appearance by China at a Summer Games since 1952, when just a single athlete competed, was one of the elements that served to keep both standards and international interest high, in spite of the absence of the majority of Eastern Bloc countries. “That was the first dart to blow the boycott out of the air,” Ueberroth says.

Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Romania also attended and finished second in the medals table with 20 golds, as did Yugoslavia, which had hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. In the end, the boycott was restricted to just 16 countries insufficient, given excellent US ratings, to trigger any reduction in the television rights fee.

Rain was not the only issue that threatened to

affect the Torch Relay. The Games organisers had had to go to extraordinary lengths to get their hands on the Olympic Flame. This was because influential figures within Greece took a dim view of Los Angeles 1984’s idea of selling relay slots for $3,000 each to raise money for a number of charities.

“We said, ‘Let’s get the Flame from [the Winter Olympic host-city] Sarajevo,’” Ueberroth tells me. “They agreed to give us the Flame. Then the Communist Party heard about it and forced them to renege.”

Plan B, worked out in conjunction with the IOC’s Monique Berlioux, was to have a party of French students visit Olympia and collect the Flame at the Temple of Hera as part of a project.

The students brought the Flame back with them on a boat. Even then Los Angeles’ problems were not entirely over. Says Ueberroth: “We found out you couldn’t fly on a commercial flight with an open Flame. But you could on a cargo flight.”

With one Flame safely in their possession, Los Angeles 1984 contacted Greece and notified them that if they were still prohibited from collecting the Flame officially in the usual way, they would simply use the one they had. “They said, ‘You can get it, but we will not allow anyone into the stadium,’” Ueberroth says.

A contemporary report of the Ceremony in The Times said, “there was enough pageantry to preserve the tradition, but despite the presence of a senior Cabinet Minister, Greek participation

Below: The Los Angeles 1984 Torch Relay.

Photo: Courtesy of the IOC

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Above: The equipment of gold medal winner Sherri Howard of the United States after she claimed victory with team mates in the 4x400 metre relay.

Photo: Getty Images

in the Ceremony was evidently low key”, with tight security measures barring the public for the day. A banner reading, “Olympia refuses to give the Flame” hung above the entrance to the sanctuary.

With television and marketing rights known to have raised a decent sum and capital projects restricted to a minimum, it was generally expected that the Games might make a small surplus, provided the knock-on effects of the boycott were not too severe. At an IOC meeting in West Germany in 1981, Ueberroth was quoted as saying that the committee hoped to make a small profit “to show that the Olympics makes sense again”. Just after the announcement of the Soviet boycott, he similarly insisted: “We’ll have a small surplus either way.”

When after the Games, in September 1984, it was stated that the actual profit was more like $150 million, it was big news. Even The Times, hardly the most excitable of newspapers, referred on its front page to the “Bonanza Olympics”. The piece was accompanied by a brilliantly economical Calman cartoon consisting simply of the sum $150,000,000, but with two extra ‘Rings’ appended to the bottom of the last three zeroes to create the Olympic symbol.

Was the “small profit” line just for public consumption, or was Ueberroth genuinely surprised that his private enterprise Olympics turned out to have done so well? Bear in mind, too, that the final surplus was even higher at some $228 million.

“We knew we would have a good-sized surplus if things went well,” he acknowledges, while emphasising how much scope there had been for nasty surprises right up until the last moment. “If we had to call up the National Guard for extra security it would cost us many millions of dollars a day.” They never did. “Just that one item would slash the surplus. You need

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to budget for the good and the bad.”

Every stadium used, moreover, was subject to a complex rental agreement. He tells me that they still had not got a contract for the Coliseum, venue for the Ceremonies and for athletics, with three months left before the Games.

Many uncertainties, then, persisted almost to the end, though smart management initiatives had been used to mitigate other risks. Early on, for example, Los Angeles 1984 had negotiated a deal with labour unions giving certain undertakings in return for a pledge that “any strikes would always exclude any Olympic venue and activity”. Says Ueberroth: “Everybody kept their word. That was a big piece of comfort and a big part of our success. The unions were very fair with us.”

The United States Olympic Committee received 40 per cent of the bumper surplus, with a further 20 per cent going to national sports governing bodies. The remaining 40 per cent was used to set up an inner-city charity, which is know as LA84 Foundation, which Ueberroth says is still very successful today. “The recipients

Above: The LA84 Foundation in Los Angeles.

Photo: Courtesy of LA84 Foundation

have spent the original $228 million, and by investing wisely, have over $300 million today” he explains. “These people have spent and invested the money well.”

Given that the IOC would probably be very reluctant to repeat the experiment of a private enterprise Games - indeed the huge security costs entailed by a modern Olympics probably renders any repetition impossible - what can be said to be the legacy of Los Angeles 1984?

Plenty. For one thing, the Los Angeles Games demonstrated much more clearly than Moscow that boycotts mainly hurt the countries embarking on them, in particular their athletes.

While Poles, Hungarians and East Germans were obliged to stay away, the world thrilled to the exploits of Carl Lewis, Li Ning and Seb Coe. The very first gold medal of the Games, in the www.facebook.com/insidethegames

Above: An ABC cameraman during the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games.

Photo: Steve Powell/Allsport

50 metres pistol, went to Li’s compatriot, Xu Haifeng, who thus became the first Chinese Olympic medallist. There were landmarks for women athletes too, with the Games featuring the first Olympic women’s marathon and road racer Connie Carpenter-Phinney of the US becoming the first woman to win an Olympic cycling event.

From the moment that Ueberroth “got half a dozen friends to work for nothing”, the 1984 Games placed great reliance on volunteers they had little choice. “There was never a time that we didn’t understand we could not have operated without volunteers,” Ueberroth adds.

These were often long-term commitments, with people taking leave of absence from jobs for months on end. “These were not fun assignments; they didn’t get tickets, they just had to work,” he says. “The people in charge of every sport were volunteers. We called them Commissioners.”

Most fundamentally of all though, I think, the commercial deals struck by Ueberroth and his team demonstrated in the most concrete way that, when handled with business acumen, Olympic properties retained great value - and this at a time when the Movement’s finances were at a particularly low ebb.

Says Ueberroth: “Samaranch [who became IOC President in 1980] was a very, very intelligent global citizen, and he saw that our plan, if it worked, would be something that would not be passed onto the next city, but adopted by the IOC.” This, indeed, is exactly what happened. As Dick Pound, the Canadian IOC member who played a key front-line role in sharpening up the IOC’s business practices and bringing the Movement back from the brink, has written: “It was not until after the 1984 television rights @insidethegames

to the Los Angeles Games had been negotiated that the IOC finally woke up to the economic reality.”

Pound remembers Samaranch asking him in 1983 to take over responsibility for television negotiations, in which he wanted the IOC to assume a more active role. By January 1984, with the Los Angeles Games still six months away, Pound was closeted with top TV executives in Lausanne’s Palace Hotel, negotiating a colossal $309 million fee for US rights to the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, Canada.

It was, writes Payne, “the most money ever paid for a single event - sports or otherwise - in the history of television”. There was a backlash: negotiations for rights to the 1988 Summer Games, to be held in Seoul, did not go nearly as well. Nevertheless, after that brief stall, the value of broadcasting rights fees has escalated sharply over the past two decades, providing the Movement with a dependable revenue stream that long ago helped it to seize back control of its own destiny.

The IOC also worked hard to develop a structure which would enable it to control some of the sponsorship income that, as Los Angeles underlined, the Olympic brand was well capable of generating.

The TOP worldwide sponsorship programme, which leverages the same concept of category exclusivity as underpinned Los Angeles 1984’s “less is more” sponsorship strategy, but on a global basis, made its first appearance in the 1985-1988 Olympic cycle, raising $96 million from nine multinational companies. Still going strong, it is set to break the $1 billion barrier in 2013-2016.

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Chameleon Modern pentathlon of the Olympics Dr h.c. Klaus Schormann, President, UIPM

Modern pentathlon is the “original” Olympic sport yet has had to adapt more than any other over the past 30 years to retain its place on the programme. Mike Rowbottom finds a very different sport to the one held at Los Angeles 1984.

M

odern pentathlon - fencing, swimming, equestrian, shooting and running - was created by the father of the Modern Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, in the image of the pentathlon that formed a centrepiece of the ancient Greek Games.

Yet this historic event has altered itself more in the past 30 years than any other within the Olympic Movement.

As the freshly installed President of the sport’s world governing body, the International Modern Pentathlon Union, Klaus Schormann received urgent guidance from the then President of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, which he has never forgotten.

“I remember well when I became President of the UIPM in 1993 I had conversations with Juan Antonio Samaranch,” Schormann told insidethegames.

“And he said to me ‘Mr President, your sport is too long. It has too much tradition. Something has to change. You have to make it more interesting for television, and less costly to televise.’ This was a key conversation I had with Mr Samaranch.”

The sport had already begun to heed the need for change at that point. At the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics, competition was condensed from five to four days, partly to dissuade competitors from taking sedatives or betablockers to enhance their shooting by scheduling it five hours before the running.

Los Angeles also saw new arrangements in the concluding run. The leader after four events set off first, with others following him in a handicap according to their points differential, meaning the overall winner was the first to cross the line.

However, the “conversation” between Presidents Samaranch and Schormann took place a year after the Barcelona Games, where the unpredictable riding event - on horses drawn at random by athletes - was put on last. The move failed to earn extra media attention. The www.facebook.com/insidethegames

run had also reverted to its previous, nonhandicapped mode.

More - or rather less - was needed. And Schormann, with his background of marketing and publicity within the UIPM, was just the man to act on this message.

At the Atlanta 1996 Games, the modern pentathlon switched to its current incarnation of a one-day competition, with competitors using air pistols, rather than firing live rounds.

Four years later, women made their Olympic debut in the event.

Meanwhile, from January 1 2009, the final two elements of shooting and running were combined, and in 2011 air pistols were replaced, controversially, with laser pistols.

Schormann has been the agent of change, and he believes every new element has improved the sport he loves.

“It has been very difficult - I had a lot of hurdles in front of me,” he said. “But I am a visionary - I am always looking at ways to the future. If you don’t do this as a leader you are lost.

“The biggest change was the switch to a one-day competition. The second biggest was changing to air pistol. It is a completely different skill to firing a pistol, which made the shooting element much more difficult. But there was more safety.

“The biggest steps we have made have been with the aim of making our sport more attractive to the audience.

“At the UIPM Congress in Guatemala in 2008, when we wanted to change to the combined shoot-run, we only had 56 or 57 per cent of the vote. We could have lost it. But after we brought it in for 2009, people were saying to me: ‘President, thank you so much. The crowds are really clapping, they love it so much.’”

Joël Bouzou, the French 1987 world champion who spent 15 years as the UIPM secretary general before taking up a role as a vice-president in 2012, concurred with Schormann’s view.

“I think the one-day format and the more @insidethegames

Above: Stephanie Cook of Britain won gold in the women’s modern pentathlon at the Sydney 2000 Olympics on October 1, 2000.

Photo: Stu Forster/Allsport

compact course have to be the most important changes,” said Bouzou. “In the future we will have one competition with five events in the same place. But the modern pentathlon is not only about spectacle, it has always been about controlling a range of skills, and that is why it’s so special.”

Many competitors at the London 2012 Games had baulked at the idea of laser shooting just two years after the seismic change of having to finish their event with alternate rounds of shooting and running.

The argument for laser shooting was that it was safer, easier to stage, allowed spectators to be closer to the action, and made it easier for athletes to travel with the modified air pistols.

“I had the idea then of using lasers for shooting, and it took me years to research before we introduced it,” said Schormann. “But it was the last big step in shooting, from fire to air pistols to lasers. It meant you could have shooting competitions in all places, with safety.”

The combined running/shooting event in the men’s modern pentathlon at the London 2012 Olympic Games on August 11, 2012.

Photo: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

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Aquatics

Dr. Julio C. Maglione, President, FINA

The FINA of 2014 has little to do with the FINA of 1984. Thirty years have gone by and the strength of aquatic sports has immensely progressed: our FINA World Championships presently reach over 4.5 billion cumulative TV viewers; we are a pillar of the Olympic Movement, being one of the International Federations bringing a higher contribution to the success of the Games. Thanks to the successful inclusion of our five disciplines in the programme, we are a truly global organisation, with 204 national members in the five continents. We have solid development programmes aimed at benefitting our athletes, coaches and officials; we are respected and favourably recognised by our partners and sponsors; we have unprecedented levels of coverage from TV and media. We provide memorable competitions in iconic venues, with great stars and superb performances; we are at the forefront of the fight against doping; we constantly innovate our sport programme – the inclusion of high diving is the latest example. We pay special attention to masters and juniors in all disciplines. To summarise, FINA and aquatics are today brands of success in a very competitive and challenging international sport market.

Archery

Professor Dr Uğur Erdener, President, WA

In the last eight years especially, there have been a lot of changes in our sport - all very positive according to our World Archery Plan, which was prepared by all our stakeholders. We established a World Cup circuit and this money award competition system became very interesting for our archers, spectators and TV for many years.

We changed our name and logo according to our stakeholders’ expectations. Now World Archery has a very attractive, modern logo instead of a classical emblem.

Another important change was related to the competition format. We now have a very dynamic individual match system and a set system for teams, and in the London Games, more than 30 matches were ended during the shoot-off. These are very exciting match and set systems for everybody, and all our stakeholders like these new competition formats.

We have very well organised event and result teams and they use modern technology managed by our event director, with a very experienced show director and comentator for all our major events.

We have a excellent sponsorship programme, plus archery development programmes in different areas.

We now have a totally different and very attractive Olympic sport as a result of a very successful strategic plan and all survey results prove this.

Badminton

Poul-Erik Høyer, President, BWF

The changes within the world of badminton since 1984 have definitely been for the better - at many levels.

Obviously, the most significant change has been badminton’s admission to the Summer Olympics sports programme in Barcelona 1992. This landmark has been the most important development in our sport in the past 30 years and has propelled badminton into the upper echelons of international sport. The IOC’s promotion of badminton to Group C of the Summer Olympics sports following the 2012 Olympics, has underlined the sport’s progress.

On court, the change to a ‘running scoring’ system in 2006 has impacted the spectacle of badminton positively and was well received by players and fans alike as point-scoring quickened. We have continued to embrace innovation, such as the recently-instituted instant reviews, to enhance the sport for the benefit of all.

Commercially, revenues from the sales of television and sponsorship rights for major events, the BWF World Superseries and, most recently, the BWF Grand Prix Gold have allowed our world-governing body – rechristened the Badminton World Federation in 2006 – to invest more in badminton’s future and development globally. Now comprising 180 member associations, the BWF is working to make badminton the most popular schools’ sport through its grassroots programme, Shuttle Time, which is already ongoing in more than 60 countries.

As the Summer Olympics venture to South America for the first time, badminton’s horizon looks bright; with BWF’s vision firmly fixed on further development worldwide and more innovations and technological advances when appropriate.

Badminton made its debut on the Olympic programme in 1992

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Basketball Patrick Baumann, Secretary General, FIBA The Los Angeles Games brought a new wind to basketball, which in the late 1980s-early 1990s underwent a radical change when FIBA, the NBA and the International Olympic Committee enabled the participation of professional basketball players - particularly those from the NBA - in the Olympics. Borislav Stankovic, the FIBA secretary general at the time, proposed to David Stern, who took over as NBA Commissioner in 1984, to have basketball played at the highest and most competitive level imaginable. They made it possible for the whole world to marvel at the USA’s “Dream Team” during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics but also ensured that every participating country in national team competitions around the world would always do everything in its power to bring their very best players. FIBA also had its first commercial sponsorship in 1984, with a basketball provider at those Olympics. This company is still our partner to this day. And Michael Jordan, at 21 years of age, played for the USA. So in many ways, the 1984 Games were a starting point for the globalisation and commercialisation of basketball as we know it today.

Baseball Softball

Riccardo Fraccari co-President, WBSC Don Porter co-President, WBSC

While baseball has had a long history in the Olympics dating back to the III Olympiad in 1904, it was the 20-years following the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games in which both baseball and softball saw a dramatic increase in global participation and the birth of new National Federations across the world, which has evolved baseball and softball into the universal sport that it is today.

Since 1984, baseball and softball’s global footprint has more than doubled in size - reaching Africa, blanketing Europe and the rest of Asia and South America and spreading in Oceania. Baseball and softball’s global presence, in terms of National Federations, went from 54 countries in 1984 to over 140 countries today. This explosion and unprecedented growth was a direct result of baseball and softball’s inclusion in the Olympic Games and the sheer power of the Olympic Movement.

As a result of the Olympic legacy of the last 30 years - and because of baseball and softball’s ‘Olympic roots’ - our sport is continuing to grow in popularity around the world today and is on a sustained path of deepened universality and globalisation.

Both Baseball and Softball appeared on the Olympic programme from 1992 until 2008

Biathlon

Anders Besseberg, President, IBU

During the past 30 years the sport of biathlon has changed dramatically. Some of the most important milestones include the first Women’s Biathlon World Championship which took place in 1984, and in 1992, women made their Olympic Winter Games debut, and the world’s best biathletes could fight for six Olympic gold medals (three for each gender).

Today our athletes are fighting for 11 Olympic gold medals (five for each gender, plus one in mixed relay).

At the end of the 1980s there was hardly any TV coverage of biathlon, but gradually through the 1990s this changed with the World Championships having reasonable coverage. From the end of the 1990s until today there has been an unbelievable change in the interest for our sport – today we are one of the most popular winter sports on TV. From being a sport where three to five Member Federations were winning the medals at major biathlon events, to today where there are between 12 to 15 nations winning the same medals.

Due to growth and the big changes the sport of biathlon has undergone over the past 30 years, the budget of the International Biathlon Union has grown from approximately €100,000 per year to approximately €15 million annually.

There is no doubt that the growth and changes we have seen in biathlon over the past 30 years have placed it as one of the most popular winter sports. Not only regarding TV-ratings, but also among young people. We have tens of thousands of youngsters who want to become a new Magdalena Neuner, Darya Domracheva or Ole Einar Bjørndalen.

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Bobsleigh and Skeleton

Ivo Ferriani, President, FIBT

The answer is a clear: for the better!

With the changing of the fortunes of the Olympic Movement we were able to benefit in an incredible way.

First of all, the Olympic Games gave us a greater audience than we ever had before.

We were able to present our sports to the world.

That again created interest not only from the media side but also for all National Federations.

Thanks to the Olympic Movement, we were also able to develop our lovely sports much more in the past 30 years.

We have changed into a high-performance sport where the athletes’ driving skills, athletic capability and technical equipment must be in a perfect balance in order to give the best possible performance.

We also managed to introduce women´s bobsleigh as a new discipline – there was a clear demand for it and we followed it.

In addition, we put skeleton for men and women back onto the Olympic programme.

So overall, the past 30 years did make a big difference to the FIBT and it is a clear result of the change within the Olympic Movement.

I believe if the Olympic Movement had not had such an impact to all our sports, many of us would not have had the opportunity to change and develop things so fast in our own sport.

Skeleton was re-introduced to the Olympic programme in 2002

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Boxing

Dr C K Wu, President, AIBA

Boxing had been the last Olympic sport not to have both men and women represented and I am delighted that after London 2012 this is not the case anymore. Many goals were achieved, some even beyond expectations. Above all, a special mention goes to the triumph of women’s boxing. These women, who for the first time participated in an Olympiad, performed with such spirit that words fail to describe the atmosphere they created.

We are also proud to have announced the launch of the AIBA Professional Boxing programme, AIBA’s first fully professional boxing initiative. Since then, this exciting project has developed at great pace. This is another example of AIBA’s drive in fast-tracking the development of the sport of boxing and for the good of the boxers’ careers.

We have already entered a new era for our beloved sport, we are currently rewriting history. This [APB] is part of my ambition, a very important ambition. AIBA must have the future. Olympic boxing amateur has been going on for many years. We have had the World Series of Boxing, which proved very, very successful.

I would like to change AIBA as the ultimate responsible body for the boxer’s entire boxing career, including amateur and professional, and would like to give more opportunities to all our boxers to compete with a stable financial status and as respected role models for young generations.

I would like to make AIBA the true governing body to support all National Federations and grassroots, including clubs, by generating more revenues from the APB programme. I am deeply determined to change the image and reputation of our sport with transparency, popularity and social contribution by taking the responsibility of managing the destinies of the sport of boxing in all forms.

Canoeing

José Perurena López, President, ICF

Canoeing has seen huge changes in 30 years. Canoe slalom was added as a core sport in the Olympic Games at Barcelona 1992 and has attracted much attention from younger audiences. Canoe sprint has seen huge changes in technology over 30 years with carbon fibre becoming prominent and the addition of 200m racing which is popular with spectators. TV advances have meant greater awareness and exposure for the sport, building athlete stories and heroes around the world.

The same period has seen developments in artificial slalom courses which removes the issue of water supply for competitions. This has greatly enhanced the sport experience and also spectator experience as it creates a great venue and atmosphere. The control of water flow means a fair field of play for all competitors too.

The development of the Olympics has also meant professionalism of teams and the administration. As teams develop they demand event organisers to be more efficient. The ICF has been at the forefront of harmonising events to ensure same conditions across its events. As more money has been attracted to the sport, the more money is spent on improving the sport and increasing the event management processes.

A large achievement and development has been new disciplines including kayak polo, freestyle, ocean racing and Paracanoe.

Curling

Kate Caithness, President, WCF

Curling was not an Olympic sport until the 1998 Nagano Games.

Of course we were aware of the changes which happened since the 1984 Games in Los Angeles which in essence allowed our sport to gain Olympic status.

Curling has evolved greatly since 1998 when we have almost doubled our membership and, following the success of the Sochi 2014 Games, the signs are that our sport will continue to grow at a rapid rate.

Without doubt the profile and exposure that the Games have given our sport is responsible for this growth and the help and support we have received from the International Olympic Committee has allowed the sport to professionalise its operations, from development and competition delivery through to running our own broadcasting operations.

Curling made its debut on the Olympic programme in 1998

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Cycling

Brian Cookson, President, UCI

We have seen some wonderful moments in cycling over the last 30 years. Our sport has experienced a growing profile at the Olympic Games as well as new disciplines being added to the Games Programme such as BMX, helping to bring new fans to our sport. Of course we have also had challenges, particularly in the field of anti-doping, and we are addressing those to ensure an even better, more vibrant future for cycling.

Equestrian

HRH Princess Haya, President, FEI

The changes equestrian sport is currently undergoing have largely been inspired by the Los Angeles business model. The FEI previously relied heavily on taxation of the sport and its members to secure its finances. But things have changed enormously and this is the first FEI administration that has not increased taxes at all, either for National Federations or our sport.

We have signed some very significant long-term sponsorship deals, including a 10-year partnership with the Swiss watchmaker Longines and a five-year contract with the Saudi Equestrian Fund, who have invested in the remodelling and ongoing support of the Furusiyya FEI Nations Cup in jumping. We welcomed the New York-based fashion designer Reem Acra as the title sponsor of the Reem Acra FEI World Cup Dressage and the natural nutrition company Alltech has been title sponsor of both the 2010 and 2014 FEI World Equestrian Games.

We created FEI TV, the FEI’s official online video platform, and have recently concluded some lucrative television rights deals.

We have improved the FEI’s financial metrics across the board with the proportion of overall revenue from commercial activity up from 29 per cent to close to 50 per cent.

However, these efforts are not done simply for the FEI to increase its assets. In 2011 we created FEI Solidarity, which is modelled on the hugely successful Olympic Solidarity programme. For the last three years, FEI Solidarity has been providing assistance to the National Equestrian Federations, particularly to those with the greatest needs, so that they can develop their own potential and expand the sport in their country. We are investing heavily in the future of our sport.

The top level of our sport is also thriving, with a huge increase in calendar fixtures, ever greater numbers of athletes - both human and equine - and a growing range of nationalities involved. And that globalisation of the sport has been helped massively by the FEI’s ongoing work with the OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) which will ultimately make the cross-border movement of horses more efficient and welfare-friendly.

One of the FEI’s key goals is to have an even closer cooperation with the International Olympic Committee in order to achieve a more integral role with the IOC and Olympic Games Organising Committees so as to drive down the costs of our venue as well as the overall costs of our sport in the Olympic Games.

Equestrian sport is undergoing exciting transformations and the FEI is committed to safeguarding the sport’s values and traditions while increasing its appeal and relevance to the modern sporting scene.

Fencing

Frédéric Pietruszka, secretary general, FIE

We are an old but very dynamic sport. Our centenary [last year] marked the renewal of fencing as it embarks on a new century. While we must not forget the 100 years that have passed, we must concern ourselves more with the next 100.

It is important not to change the actual rules of fencing too much. But we need to give consideration to modifying aspects of the sport’s presentation and the clothing and equipment used by the athletes.

The world of sport is very conservative. Any changes we make need to be evolutionary, not revolutionary. We must introduce any novelties that we do think are necessary slowly and not too brutally.

There is a due process, with changes needing to be approved in Congress and so forth. So I do not expect big changes before Rio 2016.

But, in the sport of fencing, we already knew that we had to implement innovations so as to make people think of fencing as a sport of the future. Perhaps one day fencers might compete using laser weapons, instead of metal ones. At the moment the notion of using lasers is no more than a distant dream. But we do need to think about what our sport ought to look like in 20 years’ time.

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The

Bedrock T

he sound finances of the 1984 Los Angeles Games meant that suddenly the Olympics were attractive to commercial sponsors, and athletics was a beneficiary of that upsurge in investment. Carl Lewis heralded in a new era of trust funds and ultimately full professionalism.

A year earlier in Helsinki, the IAAF had already implemented the greatest and most successful initiative in its history by staging the inaugural IAAF World Championships in athletics, which remains today the jewel of the IAAF World Athletics Series. After the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, the IAAF World Championships are the third largest sporting event in the world based upon number of participating nations (over 200) athletes (over 2,000) and global TV audience (six billion across over 200 territories accumulated across nine days of competition).

The year 1983 marked a turning point too in athletics’ relationship with the Olympic Movement. Up until 1980, the Olympic Games had constitutionally been the World Championships of our sport, but ever since Helsinki 1983 those Championships have been in-house.

The IAAF World Athletics Series of events financially transformed the sport of athletics, from the end of the 1970s when the IAAF had virtually no competitions or finances of its own, to the current buoyant situation we have today. In 2014, the financial support of our IAAF Official

Football

Partners and our broadcasting contracts with EBU and Dentsu helps, among others, to fund the IAAF’s annual worldwide development programme of $15 million.

This includes a worldwide network of Regional Development Centres and High Performance Training Centres.

The last 30 years has reinforced the message that athletics represents universality, equality and fairness.

The IAAF is an association of 212 nation Member Federations; more nations than the UN. Since the very beginning of the professional era we have offered equal prize money to men and women. We have also progressed steadily towards total equality of opportunity in our competition programme at both our World Championships and Olympic Games. Today the decathlon/ heptathlon, 110 metres / 100m hurdles and 50km race walk (no female event) are the only differences in disciplines between the men’s and women’s programmes.

We are especially proud of the IAAF’s leading role in the sport world’s fight against cheating, especially doping and age falsification. We will continue to do everything in our power to protect the vast majority of clean, honest athletes by robustly defending the fairness and credibility of competition.

The greatest danger to athletics and the entire Olympic Movement is the rising age of the average sports fan which is interested in Olympic sports. The 50+ age group is

Athletics Lamine Diack, President, IAAF

Above: Jackie Joyner-Kersee of the US during the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games.

Photo: Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images

now the main audience for our sport. The IAAF, with heavy investment in internet and social media and the development of a School/Youth Programme crowned by the IAAF’s globally successful ‘Kids Athletics’ project, is combating this issue. We are engaging with the younger generation to inspire the athletes and fans of the future.

We are confident that in the next 30 years athletics will reap the reward of those efforts.

Sepp Blatter, President, FIFA

FIFA exists to develop the game for all around the world, something we share in common with the IOC. Football is an important part of the Olympic Games and the sport has enjoyed considerable success in the Games since 1984 with the likes of Lionel Messi and Samuel Eto’o having won gold medals.

Probably the most important change in that period has been the introduction of the women’s tournament at Atlanta in 1996, a landmark moment in the sport. This [expanding the women’s game] is one of my projects. We have shown that now, all around the world, girls and women can play football.

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Golf

Peter Dawson, President, IGF

Over the last 30 years we have seen golf grow markedly throughout the world, with many new countries joining the sport. Our elite players have increasingly committed to maximising their performance through regimented training programmes and improved diet, in addition to time on the practice ground. Today, golf’s stars are true athletes. While golf has evolved, the values of honesty, integrity and respect are as central in our sport now as they were three decades ago.

Golf was last part of the Olympic programme in 1904 and will return in 2016

Handball

Dr Hassan Moustafa, President, IHF

The last 30 years have been highly important for the global development of handball. Starting from Europe, the handball virus has infected all continents and the IHF now counts 200 Member Federations.

By looking upon the Olympic history since 1984, the number of participating women’s teams has increased from six to 12 teams since 2008, and the goal of equality of 12 participating teams for both women and men has been reached.

In general, handball has become a faster sport, with considerably more goals – thus the number of spectators in the arenas and on TV has increased significantly worldwide. In brief, the past 30 years can be named the “boosting decades for handball”.

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Hockey

Leandro Negre, President, FIH

We have radically changed the formats and rules, thereby making the game simpler, quicker and more entertaining. We have always put a big emphasis on technology. Back in 2006 we adopted video umpire referrals, ahead of most other sports. Online we have created a strong social media presence to engage with more fans. We broadcast international FIH events live in high definition on YouTube and we are one of the fastest growing Federations on Facebook. All of which is empowering new nations to join our movement: Vietnam, Sierra Leone and Colombia are all hoping to become members at Congress later this year.

Judo

Marius Vizer, President, IJF

We have achieved a lot of positive steps. But we still have more work to do in continuing the reform of the programme. We have set ourselves targets. Me - and my team - always like to improve the quality. I am convinced that we are on the right path but the process will never be finished. There are always new challenges in front of us.

“After London [2012] we sat down together and analysed lots of things, including the impact judo has made. We adjusted and corrected some of the rules, a process we started at the beginning of last year. The first priority is always to make the judo more spectacular, more understandable for the media and the spectators, not only for the judo community, but for everybody.

Getting team judo on the Olympic programme is important for us. Team judo can help make us more dynamic, bring that patriotic spirit. It is a chance for them [national teams] to express their value and spirit. I am confident it would be a very successful and exciting event.

Rowing

Jean-Christophe Rolland, President-elect, FISA

One of the biggest changes to rowing in the last 30 years is the growth of the sport throughout the world. The number of countries that are now members of FISA has increased significantly from 61 in 1984 to 142 today. There have been a number of changes to the structure of rowing that has helped perpetuate the universal growth. The addition of lightweight rowing to the Olympic programme has boosted the sport especially in Asian, African and Latin American countries. The holding of continental Olympic qualification regattas has enhanced a wider cross-section of nation participation at the Olympic Games.

Coastal rowing has also helped in making rowing accessible for nations where coastlines are more prevalent than calm lakes or rivers.

Another key factor in the growth of our sport is women’s participation. Thirty years ago women had only been able to row at three Olympic Games. Up until 2012, the gender ratio at the Olympic Games was 36 per cent women to 64 per cent men. At the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, women will represent 40 per cent of all rowing athletes and this percentage will continue to grow as FISA moves closer to gender equity.

Women originally raced over a 1,000m distance. At the 1988 Olympic Games the distance was changed to match the men’s distance of 2,000m. This brought women’s racing not only in line with the men but on an equal footing. Now some countries, like the United States, have a higher percentage of women rowers than men.

Wide appeal has been aided by FISA establishing rules that keep the use of rowing materials and technology on a level playing field. Boats have a required minimum weight and materials used must be approved by FISA to ensure they are affordable and accessible to all rowers.

As the Olympic Movement and sporting organisations realise the importance of environmental sustainability, FISA is proud to lead the way in the sporting world by taking active environmental measures. FISA has focused on the aquatic environment and the undeniable necessity of clean water. An alliance with the Worldwide Fund for Nature has been formed and rowers are asked to become ambassadors of the freshwater programme.

But ultimately our focus over the last 30 years has remained on the rowers and as the international sporting body we continually strive to serve them.

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Rugby

Bernard Lapasset, Chairman, IRB

The global sporting participation, engagement, broadcast and commercial landscape has changed beyond recognition over the past 30 years, enabling sport to grow, engage and inspire youth while also cementing its role in the social and political agenda.

For rugby the change has been profound and extremely positive. Rugby is now a truly global sport played by 6.6 million men, women and children in 119 nations.

Looking back over the past 30 years, the drivers of growth for the IRB have been the inception of the Rugby World Cup, which is now the financial engine that drives the development of the game worldwide, the game going open in 1995, bringing new commercial and participation growth, and of course, the IOC decision to include rugby sevens in the Olympic Games, which has been the key that has unlocked participation and commercial growth in new markets.

Of course digital and social media has been a game changer in recent years enabling the IRB to connect directly with fans and players - something that was previously difficult - while a strong focus on fan engagement and entertainment has enabled our sport to reach out to the youth market, particularly with rugby sevens and Rugby World Cup. I believe that the best is yet to come. We are beginning an exciting new era and are looking forward to our rugby sevens Olympic Games debut at Rio 2016, a first Rugby World Cup in Asia with Japan 2019 and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Each hold unique opportunities to further the reach of our sport around the world.

Rugby sevens will make its debut on the Olympic programme in 2016

Sailing

Jerome Pels, Chief Executive, ISAF

The Olympic Games have been ‘perfected’ from a point of view of consistency in procedures, sport presentation and venue management with fine-tuned scenarios, manuals and blueprints produced between the International Federations and the International Olympic Committee.

Yes, the Games all now have their style and flavour, but in the venues the IF’s and the IOC have developed the ‘show’ to perfection and you could be anywhere on the planet.

Technology is perhaps the second biggest change; the communication platforms that now exist outside to the traditional channels like TV and radio have developed beyond anything anybody could imagine in 1984 and we haven’t seen the end of this transition.

Sailing, a sport traditionally hard to follow, because it happened far out on the sea, now has its field of play close to the shore and is being made transparent with graphics and virtual reality rendering of the field of play driven by accurate GPS tracking.

Camera technology has developed with onboard cameras and microphones on the athletes.

Shooting

Olegario Vazquez Raña, President, ISSF

The 1984 Los Angeles Games was a milestone for the International Shooting Sport Federation. I was elected as ISSF President in 1980, and for the following 1984 Games the IOC agreed in adding 10m air rifle, 50m rifle 3 positions and 25m pistol women events to the Olympic shooting programme of the Los Angeles Olympic Games, increasing women’s inclusion in our sport at Olympic level.

The renovation process of our sport which started there culminated two years later with the establishment of the ISSF World Cup Series. That became a cornerstone of our sport’s Olympic qualifications system and includes 15 events nowadays.

With our traditions in mind, we successfully brought our sport closer to the general public’s understanding, and improved the worldwide grassroots participation. The latest rule changes which were approved after the London 2012 Games, for example, introduced semi-finals and medal matches, as well as elimination-style rounds, turning every competition into a breathtaking event, with an easily understandable scoring system.

We made the game clear, and we made it for everybody. New Youth Olympic Games competition formats and sport for all events were developed, and our collaboration with the International Paralympic Committee peaked, in the last years, to ensure the universality of our sport.

But not only the rules changed, the ISSF developed in the fields of safety, environment, coaching (our Training Academy was established in 1993) and the fight against doping. At the same time, we invested in communication and TV production and distribution, eventually engaging young fans on social media and through apps. Starting from the black-and-white pages of the ISSF NEWS printed magazine, after a 30-year long process we are nowadays reaching a global audience of over 500 million people per year with videos, photos, stories and digital contents through our channels.

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Keeping up appearances Never has gymnastics, in all its forms, undergone as many alterations that have affected both its form and its content than over the past 30 years.

The evolution of the performance of athletes and the directions provided by the different versions of the Code of Points, have shaped our sport to give it the appearance that it has today.

Artistic gymnastics has evolved particularly in the number of gymnasts composing the teams (from six to five), the CII final (36 to 24), the age of the gymnasts (15 to 16) and above all in the way the exercises are judged. The year 2005 was when the difficulty score was opened and for all disciplines, the advent of IRCOS and the endorsement of the right to protest. In 2009, the licence for all gymnasts was implemented and a second qualification for the Olympic Games. Rhythmic gymnastics entered the Olympics in

Skiing

Gymnastics

Bruno Grandi, President, FIG

1984, with the individuals. In 1996, it was the turn of the groups to join the Olympics.

The structures of FIG did not escape the trend either. Since 2000 the Federation has established a Parliament, the Council, whose main goal, every year, is to preserve the rules in accordance with the realities of competitions. The new century began with the creation of the Athletes’ Commission, a constantly evolving body which is now fully integrated into the life of the Technical Committees.

Traditionally oriented towards artistic and rhythmic gymnastics, FIG has successively opened up to trampoline, aerobics and freestyle along with its Gymnastics for All, which has experienced tremendous growth with more than 20,000 gymnasts at the last World Gymnaestrada.

Gian-Franco Kasper, President, FIS

Much like the Olympic motto of Citius - Altius - Fortius, the Olympic Winter Games in the last 30 years have evolved much in the same way as the athletes.

Like the athletes, the Olympics are always faster, higher and stronger with every passing edition.

No two Olympics are the same and when you look back at the Games held in the 1980s and the 1990s, few could have thought what a massive global impact the Olympics would have at the turn of the century.

From infrastructure to security, from athlete services to media impact, the Olympics have continued to evolve like no other major sporting event.

And 30 years from now, I can only imagine what the Games will bring for the global audience.

The FIS programme at the Olympics has also evolved dramatically.

There are still the traditional events and disciplines, but those have been joined by a new generation of events and competitions, like freestyle skiing and snowboarding, that very few would have predicted 30 years ago.

The competitions now staged in skiing appeal to all generations and engage fans globally.

Table tennis

Adham Sharara, President, ITTF

The inspiration for change within the ITTF comes from the apparent and effective changes made to the Olympic Games making them the most significant sport event of modern times. The changes to the Olympic Games that started in 1984 in Los Angeles and followed by structural and ‘Look of the Games’ enhancements ever since, culminating in superbly presented Games in London, were an inspiration to the sports world as a whole.

Over the last 15 years or so, the ITTF has undergone major changes. All the changes could be considered in the realm of the “visual” in order to make our sport spectator friendly. Changing the size of the ball from 38mm to 40mm may seem negligible, but in fact it revolutionised our sport by making the ball slower and more visible on the electronic screen, be it TV or a PC. The change to 11 points rather than the traditional 21 points was to go with the times and make our sport an intense experience to the viewer with more game-ending situations in a shorter and more compact time frame. We also changed the service rule to make the service transparent and the spin imparted visible to the receiver. This has reduced a lot of what was perceived as easy errors, when in fact the reason for the errors were the hidden spins.

The ITTF did not only make cosmetic changes, such as changing the colours of the show-courts, changing the TV coverage protocols, and introducing music and entertainment during our events, we also made core changes to our structure and modus operandi. This has culminated in the ITTF having 220 member National Federations while enjoying a healthy financial cushion for a rainy day.

Finally, starting in 2014, the most important change of all is being rolled out carefully and meticulously in the form of a Data Base Intelligence Plan fuelled by our existing P4 priorities (Participation, Popularity, Profit-Financing and Planning) with the newly adopted fifth priority: PROMOTION.

Table tennis made its debut on the Olympic programme in 1988

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Taekwondo

Choue Chung-won, President, WTF

In the last 30 years taekwondo has developed into a truly global sport with global appeal. Undoubtedly our greatest achievement, not just in that time, but in our 40 year history, has been getting taekwondo onto the Olympic sports programme - and we have had the privilege of being included in every Olympic Games since our debut at Sydney 2000.

Over the last 30 years, we have grown to represent 206 National Federations across all five Olympic Continents and an estimated 70 million practitioners worldwide. We have introduced new rules and state-of-the art sports technology and equipment to create a more dynamic, more exciting competition – better for athletes and for fans.

Our dedication to making the sport as accessible and universal as possible resulted in the creation of the WTF World Para-Taekwondo Championships in 2009 and we are hopeful that the advancements we have made in developing Para-taekwondo will ensure its inclusion on the 2020 Paralympic programme.

In many ways though, taekwondo has not changed at all since 1984. Its fundamental values and philosophy remain the same. It continues to teach people self-discipline, respect of others and self-awareness. And it continues to be a sport for all which offers universal opportunities, regardless of age, race, gender, faith or impairment.

Taekwondo made its debut on the Olympic programme in 2000

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Tennis

Francesco Ricci Bitti, President, ITF

Tennis has changed dramatically since 1984. Always a global sport, it has become even more universal since returning to the Olympic Games at Seoul in 1988 with the ITF moving from around 140 countries to 210 member nations. The support for tennis

by National Committees around the world, combined with the ITF’s development efforts supplemented by the Grand Slam Development Fund, has brought us champions from less traditional tennis countries like Serbia, China and Belarus. The Grand Slam tournaments have become even more established as the four pillars of our sport with the resulting professionalism extending to every facet of the sport. The ITF’s international team championships, Davis Cup by BNP Paribas and Fed Cup by BNP Paribas, now include more than 130 nations each year and give players the chance to compete on a team for their countries. Technology has evolved in every area with better playing equipment, officiating tools like Hawk-Eye and even the new Player Analysis Technology taking an important role in the sport without harming the integrity of the game. ITF established an anti-doping programme in 1986 that now includes the use of the athlete biological passport and in 2009 was one of the few sports that established an integrity unit to fight corruption. As far as the Olympics is concerned, in the 30 years since tennis was a test event at the 1984 Games, tennis has become an important part of the Olympic programme while the Olympics has become one of the most important competitions in the tennis professional calendar.

Tennis returned to the Olympic programme in 1988

Volleyball

Dr. Ary S. Graça, President, FIVB

Over the last 30 years volleyball has developed into a truly universal sport with global appeal. The FIVB has seen three Presidencies in that time, and under each one the Federation has reached more new markets and engaged with younger audiences around the world to ensure the sport grows to its maximum potential.

I was elected as the fourth FIVB President at the FIVB Congress in the USA in 2012, succeeding Mr Jizhong Wei, and since then I have worked to instil a modern and innovative vision for the sport throughout the Federation. My mission is to expand the boundaries of sports entertainment and provide a true spectacle for all spectators with the help of the latest sports industry technology.

By the 1984 Games, volleyball had already been an Olympic sport for 20 years. The game was played with 10 men’s and six women’s teams for the first time at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, sparking a volleyball phenomenon in Japan. That paved the way 32 years later, at the 1996 Atlanta Games, for beach volleyball to make its Olympic debut. Now volleyball’s second Olympic discipline is one of the world’s fastest-growing sports.

Today, while I am looking for new ways to innovate and modernise our sport, I gain inspiration by the changes made in 1998 when the scoring system was changed from 15 points per set and side-out scoring to 25 points per set and rally point scoring, which meant going from scoring off one’s own serve to each rally scoring a point. These were extremely successful, speeding up the game tremendously, making it more attractive for television and fans; and coupled with the introduction of the libero - a new player position catering for shorter players - it signifies the spirit for which I’m looking for today - brilliantly effective, innovative ways to take our sport into a new era.

Volleyball is now one of the biggest international sports, and the FIVB, with its 220 affiliated National Federations, is the largest international sports federation in the world. Volleyball has witnessed unprecedented growth over the last decades. With the great success of world competitions, such as the FIVB Volleyball World Championships, the FIVB Volleyball World League, the FIVB Volleyball World Grand Prix and the FIVB Volleyball World Cup, as well as the Olympic Games, the level of participation at all levels internationally continues to grow exponentially.

Under my leadership, the FIVB has worked tirelessly to deliver a sport which inspires and motivates young people around the world to participate in sport and which stimulates social change.

Weightlifting

Dr Tamás Aján, President, IWF

Los Angeles 1984 was a huge turning point for the Olympic Movement and I was in Athens in 1978 when it was decided that only one city would bid. Peter Ueberroth made a presentation and came back the following year having made changes relating to saving money and cutting costs.

Since that happened the Olympics has undergone a revival and a renewal where all sports, including weightlifting, have needed to set new objectives and new guidelines to adapt to the sporting world of today.

This particularly involves the sustainability of the sport and the renewal of our strategies.

Applications for World Championships is one example of this because we used to find that the same few countries would always bid, but we have worked to persuade new countries of the importance of bidding for and hosting sporting events.

All of this is a legacy from Los Angeles 1984 and we are following that lead. We are now incorporating all of these changes into our events and our organisation. www.facebook.com/insidethegames

@insidethegames

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FROM THE STREETS TO THE WORLD STAGE

SUMMER 2014

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Wrestling

Nenad Lalovic, President, FILA

Wrestling has seen a dramatic increase in worldwide participation over the last 30 years. We’ve added dozens of new National Federations and increased our average number of medaling nations at World Championships and Olympic Games from 22 to 29.

Wrestling has made significant improvements to gender equality. FILA added women’s wrestling as an associated style in 1984 and hosted our first World Championship in Lorenskog, Norway in 1987. Women’s wrestling was added to the Olympic programme in 2004 with an additional two Olympic weight classes added in 2013 for Rio 2016.

One of wrestling’s biggest improvements has been the continued adaptation of the tournament format and match rules to meet the requirements of modern audiences. After many rule adaptations that failed to create interest and drove fans from the sport, we undertook a massive overhaul of all rules in 2013 and created fan-friendly, easy-to-follow action. Since the new rules were established we’ve seen incredible growth in the popularity of our sport. We add thousands of new fans every week.

Marisol Casado, President, ITU

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riathlon is the newest sport on the Olympic programme. Having effectively started in San Diego in 1974, the swim-bike-run combination had to wait until 1989 when it had an international governing body - the International Triathlon Union - which was established with the main goal of getting the sport into the Olympics.

International Olympic Committee member Marisol Casado, ITU President since 2008, sees the relative youth of her sport as an advantage.

“We are always looking to evolve the sport,” she told insidethegames.

“And with that in mind it has been easy for us because we don’t have long traditions and people saying ‘This is what we did for 20 years.’ We draw strength from being a young, fresh sport and being open to new ideas.

“But of course our main programme is swim-bike-run and we won’t look to make changes in the near future.”

Triathlon arrived at the Olympics as a tailored package, with both men and women making their debut at the Sydney 2000 Games.

Above: The cycling leg of the men’s triathlon during the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Photo: Jamie Squire/Allsport

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Casado pinpoints the key change in her sport as being the decision to allow “draft legal” races - that is, races where cyclists are allowed to bunch and use each other for shelter from air resistance. While “drafting” was illegal, the sport required large numbers of officials to monitor the distance between athletes - officials who got in the way of the spectators’ line of vision.

The IOC encouraged the ITU to find ways of making triathlon more television and spectator friendly, and allowing drafting dramatically lessened officials’ involvement in the racing. It also enabled multi-lap courses to take over where previously there had been one long bike-run lap.

“Deciding on draft legal cycling was the main change we had to do to be part of the Olympic Movement,” Casado said. “When that happened it meant we didn’t have to have marshalls controlling the drafting.

“Also we changed our course - where normally we did one loop, we do different loops, which is more spectator-friendly.”

Casado is now pushing hard to get the mixed team relay event which held its own World Championships last year - introduced to the Olympic programme for Tokyo 2020.

“I am hopeful,” she said. “I was with [IOC] President [Thomas] Bach last year in Hamburg, where we held the Mixed Relay World Championships, and he liked it a lot. Maybe this is not enough to persuade the IOC - but we will see.”

Asked how her sport might look at the Olympics 30 years on, she responded: “I think the basis will be the same. We always think about evolving our situation, but I think we have to settle down for a time now that we are in this position. Of course we would like to have more space in the Olympic programme, and maybe to look at different distances or to have two or three events.

“We have been working on off-road competition. Triathletes are people who like to be outside, in the countryside. So maybe there can be a bike-cross triathlon? Why not?”

Triathlon made its Olympic debut in 2000

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29

“Putin’s Games” Hosting major international sports events means a lot to Vladimir Putin and the success of Sochi 2014 could have far-reaching worldwide ramifications for years to come.

Duncan Mackay reports.

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t would have been inconceivable 30 years ago to imagine a scenario whereby a Russian President dropped in on the United States team at the Olympics to share a glass of wine and wish them luck, as Vladimir Putin did during Sochi 2014.

By the time of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 relations between the US and Soviet Union were at a dangerously low level. The

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mood was perhaps summed up by the song “Two Tribes” by British pop group Frankie Goes to Hollywood released at the height of the Cold War, when general fears about global nuclear warfare were at a peak, and which stayed at the top of the UK charts for nine consecutive weeks.

Looking back it is no surprise that the Los Angeles Olympics became another battleground in this Cold War with the Soviets leading a boycott of its allies, partly in retaliation for the US and its friends doing the same four years earlier at Moscow 1980 in protest of the invasion of Afghanistan.

Fast-forward 30 years to Sochi and, while relations between the US and Russia may remain frosty, there was never any serious fear that the Americans would engineer another boycott. There were calls from some groups for them to stay away in protest over Russia’s controversial anti-gay propaganda

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legislation but few took them seriously.

But even so there must have been a few jaws dropping when Putin turned up at USA House on the Olympic Park one evening asking if he could come in. He spent about half-an-hour with United States Olympic Committee President Larry Probst and chief executive Scott Blackmun, sharing a glass of red wine.

“Putin was very gracious,” said Probst.

“What I would remember is it sends a strong message about the importance of sport to Russia.”

“We talked about mostly our impression of the Games,” Blackmun said. “He was very interested in knowing what we thought about the level of infrastructure, the level of services…We complimented him on the great operations.”

That will have been music to Putin’s ears.

Under him, hosting major sports events

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in Russia has become an extension of the country’s foreign policy. The Winter Olympics and Paralympics, along with the FIFA World Cup in 2018, are one of the two jewels in what has been dubbed “Russia’s decade of sport”, a 10-year period which also includes the World Ice Hockey Championships, the World Athletics Championships and both the Summer and Winter Universiades.

“Russia is the centre of world sport,” the country’s Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told insidethegames during Sochi 2014. “And, when the next World Cup has finished in Brazil, all eyes will be on Russia.”

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 devastated Russia’s sporting infrastructure, particularly for winter sports. It was part of Putin’s pitch to the International Olympic Committee when they chose Sochi ahead of Pyeongchang at its 2007 Session in Guatemala that a Winter Games in Russia www.facebook.com/insidethegames

would leave it with unrivalled facilities for its athletes to train at.

“By 2015, there will no longer be any problems preparing the national teams - even for new winter disciplines like freestyle skiing, snowboarding, and Nordic combined,” Mutko told insidethegames. “Before, they had no training centres and, if we add to the legacy we hope to establish after the Olympics and [World] Student Games, the basis for high performance sport will be at the highest level.”

Russia surpassed expectations at Sochi 2014 by finishing top of the overall medals table. They won a total of 33 medals, including 13 gold, a massive improvement on four years earlier in Vancouver when they had finished 11th with 15 medals, only three of them gold. It was a performance which nearly cost Mutko his job.

But it was the top-level organisation and friendliness of the volunteers which most foreign visitors will remember about Sochi 2014. The stories about hotel rooms not being ready, the number of stray dogs roaming the streets, the security fears - they all faded into the background the longer the Games continued.

“Foreigners’ attitude to the Sochi Games changed,” Alexander Zhukov, President of the Russian Olympic Committee and First Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Lower House of Russia’s Parliament, told insidethegames.

“All the criticism, all the negativity subsided. Some journalists continued to call white black, but not many. The majority of them could see that the Games had been a big success. It is impossible to call something a failure when the athletes are so enthusiastic about them.”

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With the Olympics and Paralympics having proved such a huge success, it could prove a pivotal moment in world history. Early polls appear to suggest that the bounce provided by the Games have helped Putin consolidate his domestic support in Russia. Putin entered Sochi 2014 acutely aware that his potential re-election in 2018, due to take place on the eve of the FIFA World Cup, should he choose to stand again, is not necessarily the foregone conclusion it was in previous ballots.

In this context, holding an Olympics that is so well regarded within Russia itself could be a key point in a long re-election campaign that could see Putin remain in power until 2024. If this were to happen, he would have achieved the truly remarkable feat of being Prime Minister or President for more than two decades, a longer period at the top of the political system than all the former Soviet Union’s supreme leaders, except Joseph Stalin.

It could also mean that he may remain in power long enough to attend an Olympic Games in the United States in 2024, which would seem to be an appropriate way in which to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Los Angeles 1984 and the Soviet Union’s boycott of those Games.

Main: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin celebrates with Russian athletes on February 24, 2014.

Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty Images Far left: Russian President Vladimir Putin talks with NBC Olympics President Gary Zenkel and USOC President Larry Probst at the USA House in the Olympic Village on February 14, 2014 in Sochi.

Photo: Marianna Massey/Getty Images for USOC. Bottom: Sochi 2014 Olympic Park, February 4, 2014.

Photo: Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

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DUNCAN MACKAY EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

Olympics’ Harvard IOC President Thomas Bach talks to students of RIOU. Photo: Courtesy of Sochi 2014

Sochi 2014 will be remembered for many things but in years to come its greatest legacy may be the Russian International Olympic University.

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ruly, it is a unique, one of a kind educational institution that bears the Olympic rings on its graduation certificates. In just a few years its graduates will be able to start managing sports facilities, organising World Championships and, perhaps even, be in charge of Olympic Games.

Lev Belousov, rector of the Russian International Olympic University, believes that the initiative to create such a university is well timed taking into account the development of the sports industry in Russia. “Let’s take the list of all the international sports events that Russia is to host: the World Cup in hockey, football, the Universiade in 2019,” he tells insidethegames.

“One needs not only to prepare for them and conduct the Games, but also create the infrastructure, train people to have that infrastructure maintained after the events. In the next seven to eight years we will need a minimum of 20,000 sports managers to conduct all those events.”

When insidethegames visited the impressive www.facebook.com/insidethegames

campus built by Interros, a private investment company chaired by metals tycoon Vladimir Potanin, which is also providing scholarships for individual students, the facilities were empty.

All the students were taking part in practical training at the Olympic Games. But after the end of the Paralympics they all returned here in order to continue their training.

A unique set of instructors from 10 countries, the newest education technologies, and a programme prepared by the leading sports experts - in other words, the ideal conditions have been created to develop the most highly-qualified sports managers.

Degrees awarded by the University are joint diplomas with Britain’s Coventry University, whose sports management courses are ranked among the world’s best.

The first intake of students confirms the status of the University: these are 27 students from 14 countries who entered the English language programme for a MA in Sports Administration. The group includes Poland’s @insidethegames

Otylia Jędrzejczak, a former swimmer who was winner of a gold medal in the 200 metres butterfly at Athens 2004.

“Sports is not simply sports and is not simply a business,” she tells insidethegames. “It is a choice each one of us makes. It is a choice of what we want to do in the future. And I think we have a great opportunity to make this choice in Sochi.”

The University was opened at a special ceremony attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and then International Olympic Committee head Jacques Rogge. Thomas Bach, Rogge’s successor as IOC President, took the opportunity to visit the campus during Sochi 2014.

Like an Olympic athlete aiming for gold, Belousov has set his sights for the University high. “We had a very tough task,” he tells insidethegames. “We wanted to go straight into the leading positions. It doesn’t mean immediately becoming Harvard, but we have every chance to become like Harvard.”

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It is almost a year since Marius Vizer was elected as the new President of SportAccord. Duncan Mackay finds out what impact he has made.

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arius Vizer’s election last year as new President of SportAccord, the umbrella organisation for both Olympic and non-Olympic international sports federations, spawned plenty of articles about his controversial proposed “United World Games”, an event widely perceived as a threat to more established events.

The “United World Games”, an ambitious concept which would see all the international federations host their various global championships in the same country in the same year, was the main headline grabbing policy in Vizer’s manifesto.

Since his election Vizer has had to consistently deny that he is trying to stage an event to rival the Olympic Games. Jacques Rogge even used his final press conference as

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Making waves

President of the International Olympic Committee to issue a plea to say that he hoped Vizer and his successor would “come together to discuss collaboration”.

Vizer has always denied that he sees his event as a rival to anything, instead believing that it could be a valuable source of income to nearly 100 federations. “The Olympic spirit and Olympic Games are something very different and special,” he told insidethegames.

“They [the IOC] have to be happy with my plan to bring additional resources to sport and finance the base of sport. They don’t have to worry because it’s a different event with a different background, a different strategy.”

While Vizer, also head of the International Judo Federation, insists the “United World Games” remains very much a live project, he has spent the past few months concentrating

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on introducing other important parts of his manifesto.

This has included professionalising SportAccord, a process he began last July when he appointed Vlad Marinescu as director general to replace Vincent Gaillard. The Californian, a graduate of Oxford Brookes University and the Army and Navy Academy, had previously run Vizer’s office at the IJF, which included setting-up one of the most innovative marketing programmes in sport.

The immediate problem that Vizer and Marinescu faced was hosting the World Combat Games in October in St Petersburg and the World Mind Games in December in Beijing. They were events they inherited from the regime of former President Hein Verbruggen but both needed considerable work to make them successful. Both passed off

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Above: The SportAccord World Combat Games in October 2013 in St Petersburg, Russia.

Photo: Courtesy of SportAccord World Combat Games

smoothly and the lessons learned from them will be channelled into future editions of these events, Marinescu has promised.

A new event that is set to debut in 2015 is the World Beach Games, with Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and United States all having expressed an early interest. The competition is set to be organised jointly with the Association of National Olympic Committees, who are led by Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, a close ally of Vizer’s.

Sheikh Ahmad is also President of the Olympic Council of Asia, who have been organising a biannual Beach Games since 2008.

With relatively low expenditure due to the temporary venues and natural resources of sand and sea already in place, coupled with high potential for tourism and promotion, the hope is that the Beach Games will attract worldwide attention and quickly establish itself as a fixture on the international calendar.

Already nine beach and ocean sports, both Olympic and non-Olympic, have been identified to make up the programme. They are basketball, beach football, beach handball, beach rugby, beach tennis, beach volleyball, kiteboarding, surfing and a modified version of triathlon. “It is a very exciting concept,” Vizer told insidethegames.

Other events that could be introduced by SportAccord in the near future include a World Urban Games, which is expected to feature 3x3 basketball, skateboarding and cycling trials, and World Artistic Games, which along with the traditional gymnastic disciplines could feature standard, Latin, freestyle, rock ‘n roll and hip hop dance sport, figure roller skating, artistic cycling and Aeromusicals.

But the biggest change under Vizer’s leadership could be the repositioning of SportAccord in the Olympic Movement.

Previously the organisation’s place was www.facebook.com/insidethegames

Main: SportAccord President Marius Vizer. Photo: Courtesy of SportAccord Above: ANOC President Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al-Sabah and SportAccord President Marius Vizer sign a partnership agreement in November 2013 during the IF Forum 2013 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Photo: Courtesy of SportAccord

uncertain, its influence limited. Vizer had warned them on the eve of the election in St Petersburg last year that unless things change they faced the prospect of “being manipulated from behind, with no perspectives, with insignificant funds”.

Vizer, however, has begun forming a series of strategic alliances, most notably with Sheikh Ahmad. SportAccord and ANOC signed an historic agreement last November which, for the first time, means that the international federations and National Olympic Committees are working together.

That could have a significant impact in the future on things like how money from the IOC is distributed and which events appear on the Olympic programme.

“The partnership between ANOC and SportAccord creates a strong alliance between the two organisations and will result in mutual benefits,” said Vizer. “The goal for us is to positively influence and support people around the world who are passionate and engaged in sport.”

Vizer and Sheikh Ahmad have emerged in the past year as two of the most influential figures in the Olympic Movement, both committed to raising the profile of their respective organisations. Vizer has in the past been damning of SportAccord’s lack of recognition in the Olympic marketplace. @insidethegames

He claimed that “almost nobody heard of [it], besides its members, unknown to the sports media and the media in general, with certain limited, expired and under-performing leaders, supported from the shadows.”

Vizer has pledged to turn SportAccord into “a well-known world brand, even re-branded, a modern structure, with a clear and prosperous vision, a new and performing SportAccord, free and independent, that cannot be manipulated, which would strictly serve the interests of its members and their organisation.”

It is still early days yet but the initial signs are encouraging. Vizer has taken important steps to overhaul SportAccord’s structures.

The proposed introduction of the World Beach Games is set to be an exciting addition to the international calendar.

It will be intriguing to see how the relationship between Vizer and new IOC President Thomas Bach develops over the next few months. The decision last December to nominate Poul-Erik Høyer Larsen, newly elected President of the Badminton World Federation, for IOC membership was widely interpreted as a snub to Vizer.

It seems only a matter of time before Vizer becomes a member but in the meantime, you can be ensured that he will continue working tirelessly to make sure that SportAccord becomes an organisation that matters.

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30 years 2

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The No.1 Olympic news website in the world

of Memories 5

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@insidethegames

1) The Los Angeles Coliseum, main stadium for the 1984 Olympics.

2) Barcelona was revitalised by hosting the 1992 Olympics.

3) The Jamaican bobsleigh team made their debut at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and are now superstars.

4) Beijing 2008 showcased China’s position as a world superpower.

5) Barcelona 1992 put on a stunning show.

6) Lillehammer 1994 is still fondly remembered as the best Winter Olympics ever.

7) American Carl Lewis was chosen as “Sportsman of the Century” by the International Olympic Committee.

8) Norway’s Bjørn Daehlie is one of the most decorated Winter Olympians of all time.

9) Triathlon made its Olympic debut at Sydney 2000, with Canada’s Simon Whitfield claiming the first men’s gold medal.

10) The Opening Ceremony at Salt Lake City 2002 was controversially used as a tribute to the victims of 9/11.

11) Japan’s Saori Yoshida has claimed a hat-trick of Olympic wrestling titles, including Athens 2004.

12) Izzy, the mascot for Atlanta 1996, provoked mixed reactions.

13) The rivalry between Ethopia’s Haile Gebrselassie and Kenya’s Paul Tergat was one of the most competitive in Olympic history.

14) Canada’s ice hockey victory at Vancouver 2010 sent the country into a wild frenzy.

15) Horse Guards Parade provided an iconic backdrop for the beach volleyball at London 2012.

Photos: AFP/Getty Images

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Bach to the future

Thomas Bach has wasted little time in settling into his new role as International Olympic Committee President and his position has been strengthened by his strong performance at Sochi 2014. But, as Duncan Mackay reports, his job is only just beginning.

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f early impressions are anything to go by, then Thomas Bach is far from daunted at having been elected the ninth President of the International Olympic Committee, a position that continues to grow in importance, making the occupant a quasi head of state.

During the Winter Olympics in Sochi it often appeared that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who took every opportunity to be photographed with the 60-year-old German, rather than the other way round.

It was little wonder. It was, in a large part, thanks to Bach’s robust defence of Russian preparations for Sochi 2014 in the build-up to the Games that they ended up proving to be such a runaway success. From the moment he touched down in a rain-swept Sochi a few days before the Opening Ceremony until the moment he left the city bathed in early spring sunshine he refused to counter any criticism of the event.

Terrorist threats. The international backlash against Putin’s authoritarianism and his Government’s internationally condemned anti-gay propaganda laws. Sochi’s general lack of preparedness. Even the supposed cull of stray dogs. Bach faced it all head-on.

An American television journalist’s attempt to suggest that the threat

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facing the host city was somehow unprecedented in Olympic history was met with hollow laughter. “I’m really sorry,” said Bach. “You cannot imagine how many threats there were to Games before. We had them in Sydney [2000], in Athens [2004], in Salt Lake City [2002]. You cannot single out these Games in this way.”

A British reporter who demanded to know if the IOC head was worried about Putin using the official Games kick-off for “propaganda purposes” was met with an exquisite backhand thrust worthy of the Olympic fencing champion Bach once was. “The [Olympic] Charter is very clear: the President of the country can exactly say one sentence,” Bach noted. “[Putin] will say this one sentence, as did all the heads of states before with the exception of one who violated, at the time, the Olympic Charter, and this was in Salt Lake City in 2002.” (When George W. Bush opened the Games “on behalf of a proud, determined and grateful nation” after an evening filled with American flag waving and tributes to the victims of 9/11.)

An inquiry about whether athletes would be able to voice their objections to Russia’s supposed anti-gay stance was flicked away. “There is freedom of speech in press conferences where they can explain their true

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opinions,” said Bach. Then he charged down the piste and attacked. Far from being outraged, some athletes, he said, are relieved not to have to keep talking about the controversy. “They know that if the Olympic competitions or Olympic venues are becoming a political stage, that this is no sports competition anymore.”

To another foreign journalist who demanded to know how Bach could justify backing Russia spending a reported $51 billion on preparing for these Games he gave a brief lesson in economics. “You cannot just depreciate these investments in 17 days to zero,” he pointed out.

Bach is new to the job, but not the game. He was a founding member of the Athletes’ Commission at the beginning of the 1980s, and he has been a fully-fledged member of the IOC for more than 20 years. And now he finds himself in charge of a multi-billion dollar business - the organisation has $932 million in cash reserves it emerged during the Session held on the eve of Sochi - and in-charge of a 17-day spectacle held every other year and broadcast to more than 200 countries and territories and watched by billions.

Bach won last September’s election, and an eight-year mandate, by positioning himself as a cautious, reform-minded chief executive, who will keep down the costs that put staging, and

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even bidding for an Olympics out of reach for many nations, and crack down on the drug cheats who threaten the whole enterprise’s viability.

His light touch - rarely did he make a speech or hold a press conference without trying to make at least one joke, some of which proved more successful than others - is a welcome relief after the stiffness of his predecessor Jacques Rogge, who towards the end of his 12-year reign appeared to find the job a massive chore.

At the 126th Session in Sochi it seemed like a giant weight had been lifted off IOC members’ shoulders. They appeared to embrace the new spirit of openness and innovation with some enthusiasm as they discussed Bach’s proposed Olympic 2020 agenda. Even Britain’s Princess Royal, a silent witness for most of the Sessions during the previous 10 years, seemed liberated, being among the most vocal of members and asking a series of questions.

In his election “manifesto” seeking the role as IOC President, Bach wrote of how the Olympic Games are “part of [his] DNA,” noting, “For reasons I do not remember I even had to fence with my right hand, though in football I was and still am a left-footer and in tennis a lefthander.”

Of his time competing at the Olympics, he

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Main: IOC President Thomas Bach during the flag handover ceremony of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony at Fisht Olympic Stadium on February 23, 2014.

Photo: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images Top: IOC President Thomas Bach, IOC member Princess Anne of Great Britain and Russian President Vladimir Putin during a welcoming event for IOC members at Sochi 2014.

Photo: David Goldman-Pool/Getty Images Bottom: IOC President Thomas Bach during the 126th IOC Session on February 5, 2014, in Sochi.

Photo: Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images

wrote, “Starting with regional junior championships, I finally saw the dream of my life come true in 1976: Olympic Champion - and this as a fencing teenager at the age of 22.”

Now you sense that he is really beginning to

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41

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IOC President Thomas Bach takes a tour around the Sochi 2014 Olympic Village on February 4, 2014. Photo: Martin Rose/Getty Images

face his next Olympic challenge. Sochi 2014 loomed as a massive distraction from the moment Bach was elected. Now it is out of the way he can concentrate on reforming the Olympic Movement in the shape of his own character.

In seeking the IOC Presidency - against five others - Bach focused on three main functions as part of his campaign of “Unity in Diversity”: transparency, dialogue and solidarity.

Regarding dialogue, he wrote in part, “Dialogue also means to open up to our modern society and to interact with the realms of culture, politics, education, business, media, science, etc. We need this input, because sport is no longer an island in the sea of society; it is an integral, highly respected, and popular part of society.”

Of solidarity, he wrote, “We urgently need solidarity in order to achieve true universality, to give a fair chance to each and every member of our Olympic Family, regardless of gender, and to keep us free of discrimination of any kind.”

Bach believes passionately in the idea of the Olympic Movement being a family. “I think my experience as an athlete is definitely useful,” he said. “My former colleague and great judo champion Anton Geesinki once said that Olympians speak the same language, and I think www.facebook.com/insidethegames

he was right. Athletes should be at the heart of all we are doing - at all levels and at all times.”

It remains to be seen quite how radical the changes are that will be introduced at the Extraordinary IOC Session due to take place in Monte Carlo on December 6 and 7. Key issues that are near the top of the agenda include a possible new bidding process and changes to the Olympic programme. There are already plenty of signs that Bach intends to engineer it so that baseball and softball are added to the Olympic programme for Tokyo 2020 following last year’s fiasco which saw wrestling kicked-off by the Executive Board and then voted back on by the full membership, a process which remains a source of deep anger to the other bidding sports.

“Amendments are necessary but fundamental reform is considered as well, such as the bid process,” Bach said. “It is about the big issues I already talked about in my campaign.

“Though the Olympic Movement is in quite a healthy state, there are of course challenges.

Protecting the integrity of sport against threats such as doping and the manipulation of sport events will remain a top priority under my Presidency and probably we will need to invest even more resources to pursue this important task.”

Following his election Bach embarked upon @insidethegames

his own version of “shuttle diplomacy”, jetting around the world meeting world and sports leaders to introduce himself. He even addressed the United Nations in New York. “I wanted to present my strategy of sport and politics,” he said. “We want to open up to politics for more intensive dialogue and a good partnership in cooperation, which requires the acknowledgement of sports’ autonomy.”

He added the “first months [of his Presidency] were about setting signals and the tone for relevant issues.”

Bach believes he has made a good start in and outside the IOC as the world’s most important man in world sport.

“I get a lot of support and feel curious affection,” he said. “The big role of sport in the modern society has become clear in all my meetings on the political level. Politics is very interested in a close cooperation with the IOC which goes beyond the Olympic Games but still puts the Olympic Games as the centre and uses it as a catalyst.

“I believe my readiness for dialogue and openness has become clear. You can feel a readiness for reform. But you must see what happens when it comes to tough decisions. That will be the not so easy task.”

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O brave new world

George Orwell’s novel 1984 portrayed a dystopian vision of the year the Los Angeles Olympics was held.

Thankfully things did not turn out as bad as Orwell imagined but even he could never have envisaged the mind-blowing technological advances made since then, many of which have benefited the Olympic Movement, writes Louisa Gummer.

Above: The Los Angeles 1984 Opening Ceremony.

Photo: Steve Powell/ Getty Images

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Illustration: Venimo/ VectorStock

A

sk anyone who watched the Opening Ceremony of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 what they remember, and there is a good chance they will mention the “Rocket Man”.

Their face will light up with some of the same wonder it did when they first watched Bill Suitor and his jet pack hover and swoop like a bird around the Los Angeles Coliseum.

It was magical. It was inspirational. It was a sign of the times. Exciting times. So how close is that vision of the future to where we are 30 years later?

George Orwell’s vision of 1984 had been a dystopian nightmare where Big Brother watched every move citizens made. The real 1984 felt more like a thrilling technological frontier, with developing advances in broadcasting and media, computing and communications. But now, 30 years later, even that technology seems dated.

The Los Angeles Games were the first to be broadcast in high definition, which eventually reached European homes more than 20 years later. By London 2012 Super Hi-Vision, developed by the Japanese

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broadcaster NHK, provided ultra high definition pictures - 16 times as sharp as high definition images, which themselves are four times as clear as standard TV pictures. The sound is much better too. HD surroundsound uses 5.1 channels and is very impressive. Super Hi-Vision uses 22.2.

By the time of the Los Angeles Olympics, teletext was an option for almost every European television set, and this up-to-theminute news source was promising to be successful - one headline in late 1984 read “Teletext to threaten papers, newscasts, IRD study predicts”.

Well, 30 years on, “papers” and “newscasts” are still under threat even though teletext has largely disappeared, crushed by the juggernaut that is the internet. Even in 1984 the world of computing was advancing rapidly. The idea of a home computer was starting to move away from the boffins or hobbyists who owned a ZX Spectrum or Commodore 16, and typed in the programme code by hand.

IBM had launched its “Personal Computer” (PC) in late 1981. Prices started at $1,565 for

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LOUISA GUMMER SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER, INSIDETHEGAMES was still mainly a fictional concept. In reality, these new personal computers were not routinely destined for sending email or connecting to the “internet”, which was predominantly a Governmental network of computers that forbade its use for commercial purposes. The first internet domain name, symbolics.com, would not exist until 1985. And that domain name did not signify a website, as Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of hyperlinks and the World Wide Web was still some five years away.

Even Orwell, with his brilliant imagination and uncanny ability to be able to predict the future, would surely have been staggered by how what is now known as “social media” has taken over the world. When the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics opened, Mark Zuckerberg was just 10 weeks old. But by the time of Sochi 2014, Facebook, which he created, was at the forefront of a social revolution which has transformed how the Olympics is consumed, just as much as television did when it was first broadcast at the London Games in 1948.

During those Sochi Games, the International Olympic Committee tracked social media activity on the Olympic Athletes’ hub, the IOC’s social media platform that combines feeds from more than 6,000 Olympians across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and considered such elements as mentions, likes, shares, photos and interactions across all these platforms.

More than two million new fans joined the Olympic Facebook page during the Games, while the Olympic Twitter account amassed 168,101 new followers and the Instagram account an additional 150,000. That is the

Above: Olympic Athletes’ hub.

kind of social engagement which seemed unthinkable even as recently as the 2004 Olympics in Athens, let alone Los Angeles 1984.

Television, of course, still remains how most people consume the Olympics. In 1984 Rupert Murdoch had just bought The Satellite Channel, Europe’s first ever cable and satellite channel, and renamed it Sky Channel early that year. It had almost 300,000 viewers per week across Europe. Sky was paid for by advertising and was “entirely free to the viewer”. The United States was also leading the way in round-the-clock television channels, with CNN’s launch of the 24-hour rolling news format in 1980, and 24/7 music channel MTV in 1981.

By Sochi 2014, this satellite technology

Apple Macintosh. Photo: Robert Dowell, The National Museum of Computing

a configuration without disk drives. You could even take your PC with you. Compaq launched its “Portable Computer”, the first portable IBM PC compatible, in January 1983 for $3,590. Portable is a relative term however, as it weighed in at 12.7 kilos. Apple hit back in January 1984 by launching the Apple Macintosh with the landmark $1.5 million Ridley Scott television commercial “1984” that aired during the Super Bowl. The Mac, the first mass-market personal computer featuring a graphical user interface and mouse, sold at $1,995.

The word “cyberspace” was popularly identified with online computer networks in 1984 by cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson in his book Neuromancer, but www.facebook.com/insidethegames

Above: The IOC’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram social media platforms.

@insidethegames

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LOUISA GUMMER SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER, INSIDETHEGAMES

Main: Jamaica’s two-man bobsleigh team Winston Watts and Marvin Dixon pose with their Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phones during Sochi 2014.

Photo: Jan Kruger/Getty Images for Samsung

had developed to allow television companies to offer viewers the opportunity to customise what they watched at the Olympics. So if your passion was biathlon or curling, the odds are that you would be able to watch it on a dedicated channel streamed on the internet.

In telecommunications, Sharp introduced the first lower-priced fax machine costing $2,000 and targeted for home use in 1984.

Within two years two million fax machines were being sold annually, signalling the end of the line for Telex machines. But fax machines are now increasingly becoming as obsolete as the Telex machines they replaced.

Motorola launched the first commercially available cellular phone in 1984, the DynaTAC 8000X, with a recommended retail price of $3,995. It weighed 800 grammes, offered 30 minutes of talk time and took 10 hours to charge. It was revolutionary as until now “mobile” telephones were bulky affairs installed in cars, or in heavy briefcases.

Consumer demand was strong despite the battery life, weight and low talk time, and waiting lists were in the thousands. Britain’s first cellular network, Vodafone, was launched on January 1, 1985, with the first phone call being made by veteran comedian Ernie Wise from St Katherine’s Dock in London calling Newbury, Berkshire, Vodaphone’s Headquarters. www.facebook.com/insidethegames

At Sochi 2014, Olympic sponsor Samsung gave every competitor at the Games a free “smartphone” packed with the power of a computer that would have cost thousands 30 years ago, a camera that could take a photograph they would have needed an SLR to capture only a few years earlier and the ability to call practically anywhere in the world.

With forward-looking films like The Terminator, Electric Dreams and 2010 (the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey) playing in cinemas in 1984, thoughts were already

Above: Motorola Storno 110.

Photo: Robert Dowell, The National Museum of Computing

@insidethegames

turning to the future that this development of new technology could bring. These new products were currently prohibitively expensive for all but the exceptionally well heeled, though prices were likely to fall as demand increased. Not everyone could see long-term advantages in all this new technology, but if you believed that they were more than just a collection of rich man’s toys the future looked intriguing.

If you had told a typical 1984 teenager what life would be like in 30 years time, they would not have been all that astonished to learn that people would routinely walk around with smaller mobile phones and computers, and have the newer version of the Walkman - MP3 players - plugged into their ears.

The Olympics have been early adopters when it comes to new technology. They have been at the forefront of embracing developments in entertainment technology.

Digital television, the proliferation of satellite and cable channels, the various sports channels, lifelike CGI graphics, interactive video, tablets, eReaders, digital cameras and all the other amazing advances that have taken place over the last 30 years.

Yet, like everyone else, they are probably disappointed to know that jet packs are still not in mass-production.

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Soviet break-up When Los Angeles was awarded the 1984 Olympics they were the only city interested in staging the Games.

But the collapse of the Soviet Union changed the dynamics of the bid process. Nick Butler considers the impact.

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D

ue to the strong role played by ex-Soviet countries today in hosting sporting events, it seems reasonable to say the final break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 profoundly affected the Olympic bidding process.

For the fall of the Iron Curtain created a new political and economic dynamic in which the Olympic Movement was driven less by Cold War era boycotts and more by commercial opportunity, as well as by a mass of new nations eager to flex their sporting muscles.

But while this latter point has become increasingly important, the immediate impact of the Soviet demise was minimal.

“There was certainly no paradigm change resulting from the break-up,” I was bluntly told

by Dick Pound, Canada’s International Olympic Committee stalwart who served the first of two IOC vice-presidential terms between 1987 and 1991. “The main change was the greater opportunities for IOC members from Soviet territories, but in terms of a sea change it was not too much.”

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By the mid-1980s, there was a feeling, as there is today, that boycotts were counterproductive and unfairly harming the prospects of athletes. So the absence of most of the Soviet bloc at Los Angeles 1984 was an automatic response to the Western nonappearance at Moscow four years earlier more than anything else and, despite being held in a country where the “hottest-point” of the Cold War had occurred three decades before, only North Korea officially boycotted Seoul 1988.

And it seems likely that Olympics from Barcelona 1992 onwards would have been boycott-free, Iron Curtain or not.

In an economic sense, changes had also been set in motion long beforehand, best emphasised by the success of the worldwide Olympic sponsorship programme after Los Angeles. As with many later editions, Seoul particularly demonstrated the use of an Olympics to regenerate a city, and the Games are seen as a major part of South Korea’s shift from military dictatorship to “Asian tiger”.

The ending of the Cold War did not add

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Far Left: Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan Centre: Ashgabat, Türkmenistan.

Photo: Dmitry Kostyukov/AFP/Getty Images Right: Baku, Azerbaijan.

Photo: Tofik Babayev/AFP/Getty Images

much to the appeal of bidding, and it is wide of the mark to attribute the greater number of bidders for the 2000 race, the first in which cities were given “applicant” and then “candidate” status, to events of the previous year. Beijing was the overwhelming favourite only for Sydney to stun the world’s most populous nation to be awarded the Games.

Yet in recent times, we have begun to feel the true impact of the Soviet break-up.

This was something brought home to me when, on a plane across Asia earlier this year, I took to watching the map showing our progress and was greeted by a torrent of cities with names familiar to any sports bidding enthusiast: Almaty, Astana and Tashkent, Baku, Ashgabat and Sochi.

To Pound, the Olympics allow new countries to “put themselves on the map and show themselves to the world”. Quite literally on the map, if my plane journey is anything to go by.

Uzbekistan capital Tashkent was the trendsetter of this entire process after it launched what can only be described as an www.facebook.com/insidethegames

audacious bid to host the 2000 Games in 1992.

With virtually no facilities, a scant regard for human rights and press freedom and no lake or coastline on which to hold a sailing competition, the bid was always doomed to fail, and duly did. But it, nevertheless, contained features which were highly prophetic when revisited today.

“The Olympic Games would completely change the Republic for the people,” said Uzbekistan Olympic Committee vice-president Sabirjan Ruziev. “Of course it would be good for sports, we’ll build lots of facilities, but we also want the whole world to know about Uzbekistan.”

Ulugbek Yeshtayev, chairman of the Tashkent 2000 Preparatory Committee, bullishly added: “We could host a better Games than Barcelona because we have a very stable country with no demonstrations.”

These two statements reveal the crux of why new countries want to bid, as well as the advantages they have when they do so.

“The break-up of the Soviet Union saw what @insidethegames

people perceived as under-developed parts of the world left in splendid isolation,” explained Jon Tibbs, founder and chairman of sports communication consultancy JTA. “As national identities emerged, this coincided with the proper development of natural resources and the growth of a proper economy. However, this does not buy you image and awareness on the world stage. Governments saw what was being done elsewhere and realised that investing natural resource wealth into sport helps bring attention, tourism and investment off the back of it.”

In Türkmenistan, where capital city Ashgabat will host the 2015 Olympic Council of Asia General Assembly and the 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, sport has been used to open-up the country to the world. Last November’s media forum, attended by around 60 journalists from 30 countries, boosted its external image while internal improvements, regarding human rights and political standards as well as facilities, are now emerging as a consequence of global interaction.

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Above: Kraków, Poland. Photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images

A similar situation can be found in Azerbaijan where, with Baku hosting the inaugural European Games next year, the international media are now engaging with the country not just in terms of news, but also sport.

So while natural resources - cotton, gold and newly found oil reserves, in the case of Tashkent two decades ago, and oil and petro-gas with various Euroasia countries today - are the key reasons these bids can take place, internal situations help explain their good prospects. As Yeshtayev pointed out in 1992, because they have strong authoritarian Governments with very few avenues for dissent, ex-Soviet cities are not harmed by the type of protests seen in Brazil ahead of the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the more civil but effective opposition clouding many recent Western bids.

The IOC knows things will be delivered because the Governments are usually strong enough to resist all opposition.

As we have seen over recent months in Ukraine the only caveat to this is that, when protests do occur, the whole fabric of the country can break down. But lacking the unique political context of Ukraine, this appears unlikely to happen elsewhere in the

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ex-Soviet sphere for a little while yet.

In the race for 2022 between Almaty, Beijing, Kraków, Lviv and Oslo, many of these themes are already apparent.

Several potential Western bids, Davos and St Moritz in Switzerland and Munich in Germany, failed referendums over whether to bid. Then Stockholm, which had stumbled over the November start-line despite scant Government support, withdrew from the race in January.

Oslo, to the casual eye the outstanding candidate due to Norway’s proud Olympic history, passed a referendum but is dogged by similar problems. Over half of the Norwegian population, not to mention the Government, remain yet to pledge their support.

Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital that is emerging as the early favourite in the fledgling race, is faced by none of these problems. In a country with a strong Government and a gross domestic product reportedly second only to China in the global stakes, there is no problem with public support. National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan Board member Andrey Kryukov described the bid as a way for the country to show the world the “huge progress” it has made and build on

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the success of the 2011 Asian Winter Games in both Almaty and Astana.

With regard to the other ex-Soviet sphere bidders, Lviv’s bid, now seemingly doomed to failure due to the ongoing conflict, was initially

Above: Lviv, Ukraine. Photo: Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty Images

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focused around “opening up one of Europe’s best kept secrets”, while Kraków seeks to take advantage of economic growth and raise the profile of Poland’s second largest city.

So what hope remains for traditional bid cities? Tibbs remains optimistic but only if changes are made to their bidding approach.

“There is certainly an appetite in the Olympic Movement to not just go for shiny new venues and to have a balance with these traditional markets,” he said. “There is a huge need to have a balance with traditional markets and a great nervousness that the ex-Soviet ones do not price them out.

“But I think these ex-Soviet republics are going to force the hand of Western countries to communicate better. They need to rationalise the cost-benefit ratio, reinvent the way they communicate and convince the populations to get behind bidding again.”

One final example of these changes, of course, is Russia itself. Shorn of its former status on the global stage and having lost many of its winter sports facilities when its borders shrunk in 1991, Sochi 2014 was a way for Russia to reinvigorate itself in both a sporting and a political sense.

And if recent months have been anything to go by this aim has certainly been achieved.

Other ex-Soviet nations will learn from this and, as the Cold War descends ever more into the realms of history rather than memory, the Olympic bidding process will continue to be transformed.

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ürkmenistan is set to be the latest petro-gas rich country hoping to use sport to put itself on the world map with an ambitious plan to stage a number of major events, including the 2023 Asian Games, which they hope will be a stepping-stone to hosting the Olympics and Paralympics.

Jon Tibbs, chairman of JTA, who are working with the Türkmenistan Government, described the country as the “best kept secret in world sport”.

A $5 billion Olympic Complex is already being built in the capital and will be the centre for the 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games which will feature 17 sports with more than 5,000 competitors from 62 countries, including Australia after the Oceania region was invited to take part.

“Türkmenistan is a fast-growing, developing country and the Government pays great attention to sport,” said Azat Murdov, secretary general of the National Olympic Committee of Türkmenistan.

“After 2017 we have a vision to host big events, like the Asian Games and the Youth Olympic Games.

“The final destination for us is the Olympic Games.

“But first we have to gain experience.”

Ashgabat’s Olympic Complex, which has been designed with the help of London-based consultants Arup and built by Turkish firm Polimeks, is made up of 15 venues, including two indoor arenas, a velodrome, an indoor athletics facility, tennis centre and an aquatic centre.

An athletes’ village is also being built, and is set to contain 12,000 beds once completed.

Already 400,000 kilometres of cabling has been laid under the Complex and the 800-room luxury media hotel is already 80 per cent complete.

“The Olympic Complex is a purpose built area with modern, state-of-the-art facilities which athletes will look forward to

performing in, in 2017,” said Osman Karaku, project coordinator for the scheme.

“Rapid developments in construction mean that the area will be completely ready well ahead of Ashgabat hosting the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games.”

The ambitions of the country were revealed during the Türkmenistan International Sports Media Forum, an event designed to showcase the facilities to the foreign press.

It was a remarkable occasion as, according to Reporters Without Borders’ 2012 World Press Freedom Index, Türkmenistan had the second worst press freedom conditions in the world behind North Korea.

But under President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow the country is slowly beginning to throw off its shackles.

Türkmenistan made their debut at the Olympics at Atlanta in 1996 following the break-up of the Soviet Union but have yet to win a medal.

They have appeared at every Asian Games since Hiroshima 1994 winning a total of 14 medals, including three gold.

The country’s football team, meanwhile, is ranked 137th in the world by FIFA. But its ambitions appear unlimited, boosted by possessing the world’s fourth largest reserves of natural gas resources behind Iran, Russia and Qatar, who have been awarded the 2018 FIFA World Cup and 2022 FIFA World Cup respectively.

“This has been a much-anticipated project as everybody looks ahead to the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in 2017,” said Batyr Orazov, chairman of the State Committee of Türkmenistan for Sport.

“But this development will serve for much longer than these Games - we hope to host many future international sporting events here.

“The building of Ashgabat’s Olympic Complex is just the beginning for hosting international sport in Türkmenistan.”

Duncan Mackay

Above: Ashgabat Olympic Complex. Photo: Courtesy of Polimeks

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“A passionate celebration” There is little over a year now until the start of the inaugural European Games in the Azerbaijani capital Baku and, despite the limited time they have had available to get ready, all the signs are that they will be a success. Duncan Mackay reports.

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zad Rahimov, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Youth and Sports, is the man entrusted with delivering history.

He is responsible for turning the vision of the European Games - an event talked about for more than 20 years - into reality in 2015. With the European Olympic Committees awarding the Games to Baku at its General Assembly in Rome only in December 2012 it means that the build-up is more of a sprint than a marathon.

Most cities awarded events of this scale are given at least seven years to prepare but Baku have been given less than three and the clock is ticking ever faster, it seems.

But Rahimov encapsulates the “can do”

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spirit pervading the organisers in Azerbaijan, the largest country in the Caucaus region located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, which was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1920 who needed its oil, now the source of great wealth for this relatively newly independent country.

“The decision of the European Olympic Committees created excitement among the Azerbaijani people,” Rahimov, who is also serving as the Organising Committee’s chief executive, told insidethegames. “We are honoured to hold the first ever European Olympic Games in Baku. As you know, the first step in any job always demands much more responsibility.

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“In this way, we are doing our best to organise the Games at the highest level, so we will be able to justify the confidence of the people who voted for the candidacy of Baku, and amaze the sporting community with our organisational experience.

“We want to provide the best possible venues and theatres of sport for the finest athletes of Europe at the Baku Games. The magic and inspiration of athletes competing in spectacular venues unites people and inspires the youth, as we saw at Sochi [2014].”

Hosting the Games will be the culmination of a period of spectacular growth for Azerbaijani sport under Rahimov.

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Rahimov, a graduate of the Azerbaijan University of Languages where he earned a degree in English, assumed his current role in 2005 when the country’s President Ilham Aliyev decided to set up a separate Ministry for Youth and Sports.

Since Rahimov took over, Azerbaijan has enjoyed record-breaking Olympic performances, claiming seven medals, including a gold, at Beijing 2008 and improving on that four years later with 10 medals, two of them gold.

“Azerbaijan athletes started out only winning one in the [1996] Atlanta Games, then three in Sydney [2000], five in Athens [2004], seven in Beijing and then 10 in London,” Rahimov told insidethegames.“For a small country like Azerbaijan to have won 10 medals in the Olympic Games, ranking 15th in Europe and second in the Islamic world, really shows a logical development of sports www.facebook.com/insidethegames

in our country.

“We’re moving in the right direction. In the past, we were more focussed on traditional sports like wrestling, weightlifting, boxing, judo and taekwondo. We have seen a development in gymnastics. We made big achievements in women’s volleyball after our women’s volleyball club won first place in the World Club Championships. We’ve also done well in rowing and canoeing.”

This has led to a new found respect for the country, something that extends to both on and off the field of play following the country’s successful hosting of the 2012 FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup, an event featuring 16 countries playing in six venues across the country.

“Every year the number of international competitions organised in our country increases,” said Rahimov. “In the coming years, the number and quality of the competitions will improve.

“We are now looking forward to hosting the 2015 Chess Olympiad and the 2015 World Chess Cup in Baku. In addition to hosting the inaugural European Games in 2015, Baku also has the fourth Islamic Solidarity Games in 2017.”

But, if events like the European Games act as the shop window for Azerbaijan, then Rahimov also makes sure that the grassroots is well catered for.

“Over the past 10 years, 35 Olympic sport complexes have been built,” he said.

“They provide a great opportunity for the development of sports in each region. As a result, our youth is growing up healthy and strong and a new generation of athletes is emerging.

“At the same time, the opening of such complexes in the regions means athletes have the ability to compete at various levels as the country is able to hold more and more events.

“The youth policy is the main direction of the Ministry. Sixty-six per cent of the population of our country is under 35 years old, and 32 per cent is between 14 and 29.

These people are looking for jobs, looking for partners, looking for a roof over their heads and looking for entertainment.

“We have 220 non-Governmental youth organisations and we are working hard with them. We sponsor and finance social projects and we’re working with students educated abroad.”

But, in the short-term, the country’s focus is fixed firmly on the European Games. “The @insidethegames

Main: The Flame Towers, Baku, Azerbaijan.

Photo: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images Top Left: Azad Rahimov, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Youth and Sports.

Photo: Courtesy of Baku 2015 Bottom: Azerbaijan’s wrestler Sharif Sharifov won gold at London 2012.

Photo: Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images Below: Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev reviewed the progress of the construction of the Baku Olympic Stadium.

Photo: Courtesy of the official website of the President of Azerbaijan

Baku Games will feature innovative sporting formats, fields of play and settings that will help to keep Europe at the forefront of sporting excellence and innovation, and unite people across Europe in a passionate celebration of the athletes and sport,” Rahimov promised.

Some have dismissed the European Games as a “vanity” project but Rahimov has insisted that everything being built will have a use afterwards and there will be no white elephants.

“A very important point for us and for the Olympic family is building a legacy,” he said.

“We know that in some other countries, Olympic venues stand empty after the Games, and these structures become a problem. We don’t want that, and for that reason we are focussing on our existing sport infrastructure as well as using some multifunctional venues and temporary facilities.

“The three big sport complexes that are currently under construction were started before the decision was made to host the European Games. We have a new football stadium, our gymnastic complex is now more or less ready and we will be using a multifunction venue, similar to Crystal Palace, where we hosted the Eurovision Song Contest, for sports like table tennis and badminton. All of the venues are within 10km of each other, so we don’t need to build new roads.”

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DUNCAN MACKAY EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

Ready for the

spotlight

With Pyeongchang set to host the 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, South Korea is getting ready for the world’s eyes.

But Pyeongchang 2018 is only one of several major events being staged in the country over the next few years, starting with the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon.

Duncan Mackay reports.

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he Olympics may be the most prestigious event on the international calendar but the Asian Games can claim to be the largest. This year’s event in Incheon, South Korea’s third most populous city, will feature 437 events in 36 sports.

That is eight more sports than will be on the programme at Rio 2016 with the Games in Incheon boosted by traditional Asian sports like cricket, kabbadi, sepak takraw and wushu, along with others like ten pin bowling.

But the event has been downscaled from four years ago when Guangzhou staged a Games featuring a record 476 events in 42 sports at a cost claimed to be $326 million, a relatively modest sum which most people believe was exceeded many times over.

From the start, Incheon has worked to a tight budget. “We are trying hard to create the most ‘economical and efficient’ Asian Games,” Incheon 2014 President Kim Young-soo said. “We have organised an effective marketing for the Games in order to compensate for the reduced funds.”

Above: OCA President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, Incheon 2014 President Kim Young-soo and South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won at the 4th Asian Indoor & Martial Arts Games on June 29, 2013.

Photo: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

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@insidethegames

Above: Incheon 2014 Asian Games logo and slogan. Photo: Voishmel/AFP/Getty Images

Young-soo is promising an Asian Games, the 17th edition, that will embrace the continent. “We will create a celebration for not just the hosting nation but a celebration amongst the 4.5 billion Asians,” he told insidethegames.

Incheon is competing in a crowded market place when it comes to mega events in South Korea at the moment. Next year Gwangju is scheduled to host the Summer Universiade, an event featuring more than 10,000 athletes in 27 sports. Then, of course, in 2018 Pyeongchang will stage the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, the first time the Games have been held in South Korea since the Summer Games at Seoul in 1988.

Young-soo sees the Asian Games as the ideal opportunity to start what he hopes will be a fantastic four-year showcase for South Korean sport and culture.

“We are expecting to fill 10 per cent - about two million visitors - of total visitors of 20 million with foreign spectators from countries such as China and Vietnam,” he said.

“The official promotional song of the 2014 Incheon Asian Games, ‘Only One’, is sung by none other than Asia’s K-POP group JYJ. Starting from October of last year, we have held overseas PR Roadshows in places such as Guangzhou and Vietnam.

“Also, we have visited over 240 schools in Incheon region to hold dance lesson classes for the ‘Only One’ song while sharing the news of the upcoming Games. We have also devised various tourist packages that include shopping, casinos, beauty and other attractions Korea has to offer.”

There will inevitably be attention on relations between South and North Korea. Young-soo sees Incheon as an opportunity to help build trust between the two countries.

“During the recent reunion between North and South Korean families, a North Korean representative did state that they are preparing for participation in all competitions,” he told insidethegames.

“The President of the Olympic Council of Asia [Sheikh Ahmad Fahad Al Sabah] and members of the international committees have shown positive response regarding that as well.

“North Korea did participate in the [2002] Busan Asian Games, as well as previous 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games. If the North Korean teams do participate, it will create the ‘Perfect Asian Games’, in which all 45 countries of OCA participate. We are preparing for the hopeful participation of the North Korean athletes.”

www.insidethegames.biz

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MIKE ROWBOTTOM CHIEF FEATURE WRITER, INSIDETHEGAMES

A Winter Olympics in Doha,

a Summer Games in Siberia…

How will the future look?

The Olympic Games has undergone a fundamental change in the last 30 years. Mike Rowbottom gazes into his crystal ball to imagine how they might look in 2044

O

n reflection, the Doha 2042 Winter Games marked another giant leap for the Olympic Movement.

The decision of Suzannah Spieler, the International Olympic Committee President, to introduce interactive push-button technology into the framework of the competition schedule stimulated record levels of engagement between the Games and the general public.

Combining popular votes with the traditional judging panel in the ice skating events - a model borrowed from the old days of television shows such as Dancing with the Stars and X Factor - had a profound influence.

This innovation, the IOC Executive Board has since confirmed, proved the critical factor in the ice dance gold medal going to the exuberant Canadian pairing of Justin Love and Kylie Strung rather than the more technically accomplished Russian skaters, Lev Itaythin and Lena Backova.

But by way of demonstrating that the popular vote was not all-powerful, the 50 kilometres cross country skiing event, where competitors set off with time handicaps based on their Twitter following, saw Norway’s defending champion Olaf Laf defy the odds as he made up an imposed delay of 2 minutes and 55 seconds to retain the title he earned at the Rio 2038 Winter Olympics.

Having employed stadium air conditioning effectively during the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals, Doha made good on its promise to create endless supplies of snow for its man-made courses, despite temperatures rising to 30 degrees Celsius or more in the late afternoon.

And, of course, the 2042 Winter Games will be celebrated for producing the freestyle skiing version of the four-minute mile as United States men’s aerials specialist Landon Feet produced the first back-double-full-full-double-full-triplehalf-full-quadruple-half-empty-quintuple-halfarsed-sextuple-full-back-centre-half-holdingmidfielder-up-down-back-forward-all-over-the-

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bloody-shop routine. Which will live long in the memory.

With just two years to go until the 2044 Summer Games in Siberia - where organisers have vowed to nullify any sub-zero temperatures with a multi-million ruble system of gas-fired central heating units supplied and coordinated by sponsors Gazprom - the jury is still out on whether the radical alterations to the Olympic programme will reverse the recent trend of falling interest worldwide. (Television viewing figures indicated that the global reach of the 2042 Games slipped to 97.5 per cent, down from the figure of 98 per cent for the 2040 Olympics.)

Modern pentathlon, invented by the creator of the modern Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, in the mould of the original pentathlon event at the ancient Olympics, has undergone its latest revision in order to convince the IOC that it is still, to use the time-honoured phrase, “down with the kids”.

The sport’s ruling body has successfully resisted a series of calls to replace its equestrian element with quad biking, stock car racing or Grand Theft Auto. But the International Modern Pentathlon Union has regretfully had to condense its events still further in order to satisfy the demands of a worldwide television audience with ever-decreasing levels of concentration.

Thus Siberia will see competitors fencing on horseback while wading through the shallow end of a swimming pool before attempting to shoot each other with laser pistols - three “hits” received will spell an exit from the competition - as they race en-masse towards the podium over a 400m long course on which they run the risk of being randomly battered to the ground by “Ancient Olympians” wielding giant clubs based on those recovered from the site of the original Games. Including advertising breaks, the whole event will start and finish in less

www.insidethegames.biz

Photo: Vector Stock

than half an hour.

The Games of 2044 will also see the introduction of the new, all-purpose IOC anti-doping initiative whereby every competing athlete is obliged to sit a lie detector test on the topic of whether they have, at any time, used performance-enhancing substances.

The IOC have also approved the alteration of their Olympic motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger” to the new form of “Younger, Slicker, Cooler”. As President Spieler put it recently, this represents “an Olympic nod to youth”.

Meanwhile, the flagship Olympic sport of athletics has settled into its new shape after the revolutionary changes ratified by the International Association of Athletics Federations before the last Games.

In a move which many observers believe was sparked by suggestions made by the former Olympic 200 and 400 metres champion Michael Johnson shortly after the London 2012 Games, all distances over 1,500m have been dropped from the programme.

In place of the discontinued discus event, there will now be freestyle frisbee throwing, and the shot put will be replaced by arm wrestling.

In deference to a prolonged campaign by the media for greater access to athletes, sprinters will be miked up during races in order to offer in-competition progress reports, (“Just completed the drive phase…now we’ll see who’s the Daddy!”)

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