Bridge lifted into place at London 2012 Rowing venue

A new finish line bridge has been lifted into place at Dorney Lake, the venue for the London 2012 Rowing events.

Dorney Lake is already a world-class rowing venue with a 2,200m eight-lane rowing course. It has a separate lane alongside it that competitors use to warm up and return to the start of the course after their race.

Construction work is well underway to enhance the venue’s existing facilities to bring it up to the required standards for hosting events during the London 2012 Games. A key part of this work has been completed now the new 50m finish line bridge has been lifted into place.Olympic Delivery Authority Chief Executive David Higgins said: ‘Dorney Lake is a first-class venue and the enhancements we are delivering will create the best possible facilities for the world’s best athletes to use in 2012. Lifting in a new finish line bridge completes a key part of the enhancement works and keeps us on track to deliver improved facilities well before the Games begin in 2012.’

Further enhancement works are continuing on site. These include the construction of a cut-through between the competition lake and the return lane, with a new bridge over the cut-through, and the upgrade of the existing gravel/stone access road up to the competition venue for use during the Games.

Olympic Park parklands project underway

Work has started to create the areas of parklands within the Olympic Park.

These open spaces will provide a colourful and festival atmosphere during the Games and will become the largest new urban park in the UK for more than 100 years.


More than 4,000 trees will be planted across the Olympic Park and Olympic Village, along with 300,000 wetlands plants and hundreds of thousands of plants and bulbs in varied parklands, including wooded hills, meadows, ponds, lawns, gardens and wet woodlands.

There will also be ‘hanging gardens’ 10m above the ground on the huge footbridge that links the new Stratford City development with the Park.

A tree-lined road in the north of the Park has been modelled on The Mall and Birdcage Walk next to St James’s and Hyde Park, with distinctively designed lights, bollards and traffic management so visitors feel like they are within the Park.

Olympic Delivery Authority Chief Executive David Higgins said: ‘We are cleaning up industrial land and creating the green backdrop for the London 2012 Games that in legacy will become the UK’s largest new urban park in over a century.

‘Inspired by the original Victorian parks, the meadows, gardens, woods and river walks in this new “great Park” will create a fantastic public space for people and wildlife right at the heart of the transformation of east London.’

Olympic gold medallist sees Velodrome steel structure complete

The 6,000-seat Velodrome will host the Olympic and Paralympic Track Cycling events in 2012 and is on track to be one of the first venues to be completed in the Olympic Park in early 2011. After the Games the Velodrome will be used by elite athletes and the local community and be part of a VeloPark that will include a BMX track, mountain bike trail and a road-racing circuit.

Jamie Staff said: ‘It was great to visit the London 2012 Velodrome site and I was hugely impressed by the progress being made. It was good to see at first hand how the venue is being designed and built to create a great crowd atmosphere and deliver the best possible conditions for track cyclists. I’m sure this will be a perfect venue for Team GB to continue to hit gold in 2012.'

Construction work started on the Velodrome in March 2009 – one of the last of the ‘big five’ Park venues to get underway. Now the Velodrome steel structure has been completed, work has started to install the distinctive double-curved cable-net roof.

ODA Chief Executive David Higgins said: ‘The completion of the Velodrome steel structure gives us an exciting glimpse of what will not only be a world-class venue for the Games and legacy, but another striking piece of architecture for the Olympic Park.

Jamie Staff, gold medallist in the Team Sprint at the Beijing 2008 Games, visited the London 2012 Velodrome this week to mark the completion of the venue’s steel structure.

‘The Olympic Stadium and Aquatics Centre are already firm fixtures on the east London skyline but the Velodrome taking shape has created a new focal point in the north of the Olympic Park. This year will be the toughest so far across the site, and we now turn our attentions to the lifting of the huge cable-net roof of the Velodrome, a key engineering challenge, which will help crown this spectacular venue.’

The Olympic Delivery Authority has published a document – ‘On track’ – that shows how the Velodrome has taken shape over the past year.

Christians plan to both enjoy the Olympics and protest it

Canwest News Service

When it comes to next month’s Winter Olympics, Metro Vancouver’s 1,300 Christian congregations aren’t exactly sure whether to welcome or protest it. So they’re doing both.

The two out of five residents of Metro Vancouver who identify with the Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox denominations are being urged to greet the Olympic onslaught with “radical hospitality,” which includes reaching out to the disadvantaged.

Some Christian denominations will be throwing open their doors to February’s flood of Olympic visitors with free coffee, Olympic pins, Internet access and a quiet place to meditate. Many church members are also offering travellers free places to stay.

Some of those same denominations will be holding demonstrations and workshops to raise the profile of the city’s homeless during the multi-billion dollar Olympics, as well as draw attention to sex-trade workers whom they are calling victims of “human trafficking.”

If some Christian activists have their way, the most popular T-shirt to emerge out of the Olympic Games, which they argue typically places prostitutes in high demand, will be the one reading, “Buying sex is not a sport.”

Mixed tennis and more women's cycling in 2012 Olympics

LAUSANNE — London 2012 will host a mixed doubles tennis event for the first time in the Olympic Games as well as more women's cycling, the International Olympic Committee announced Thursday.

But the changes, made in a bid to increase the prominence of women's sport, will spell the end of the individual cycling track pursuit races at the Olympics, the IOC said after an executive board meeting.

The changes will increase the number of women cyclists at the Olympics from 35 in Beijing to 84 -- 45 percent of the track cyclists instead of about a fifth - by introducing more track events for women.

The changes were made under a "commitment to increase women's participation," the IOC said in a statement, although it will make little difference to tennis.

"The inclusion of a tennis mixed doubles event will not increase the current number of athletes and will bring added value to the Olympic programme by providing another opportunity for men and women to compete together on the same field of play," the IOC added.

In cycling, women will compete in sprint, team sprint, team keirin, team pursuit and new omnium events, while individual pursuit, points race and madison events will be dropped altogether

IOC president Jacques Rogge defended the changes, underlining that they followed a recommendation from the International Cycling Union.

"Of course the concerned riders regret that, this is perfectly understandable, but the board of UCI considered that the new format will be far more appealing," said Rogge.

Despite the bid to increase the place for women's competition, the IOC has so far turned down women's ski jumping in the Winter Olympics.

Rogge argued that the cycling and ski-jumping issues were different, claiming that there were too few women involved in ski jumping at international level and that the standard for most of them lagged too far behind men.

"We considered that there was not enough quality... but we are considering definitely to include them in Sochi should the progress they are making were to continue," Rogge explained.

"We'll include them as well in the first Youth winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck in 2012, so that generation will hopefully be jumping in Sochi." http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gT1hYwhEuq0GtZ0b5pEVB8brrJ-Q

The Olympic monopoly and why it harms sport

The howls of outrage from the Olympic movement over David Crawford's report into the future of Australian sport reflect the fact that Crawford has made some telling points in his analysis of how sport is funded in this country.

The report was described this week by the Australian Olympic Committee chief, John Coates, as poorly informed and an insult to past Olympic champions, but it is exactly what the Federal Government sought when it appointed Crawford to do the job: an analysis of sports funding from a business perspective.

And one of the things it highlights is the fact that Australian taxpayers are subsidising a global sporting franchise. source: http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-olympic-monopoly-and-why-it-harms-sport-20091119-iowz.html

Ramzi stripped off his Olympic gold medal for doping

London Rashid Ramzi has been stripped of his 1,500-meter Olympic gold medal for doping, officials with knowledge of the decision said on Wednesday.

Ramzi was one of five athletes from the 2008 Beijing Games who tested positive in April for CERA, an advanced version of the blood-boosting drug EPO, in new tests using retroactive blood samples.

On Tuesday, Italian cyclist Davide Rebellin was stripped of his silver medal in the Beijing road race for a positive CERA test.

The other athletes from Beijing who tested positive were German cyclist Stefan Schumacher, Croatian 800-meter runner Vanja Perisic, and Greek race walker Athanasia Tsoumeleka. They did not win medals.

An official announcement on all five athletes was expected later Wednesday from the International Olympic Committee.

Three officials with knowledge of the rulings told the AP that the 29-year-old Ramzi had been disqualified. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcements had not yet been made.

Two officials said Ramzi was expected to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The Moroccan-born Ramzi was the only gold medalist from Beijing caught using performance-enhancing drugs. He gave Bahrain its first Olympic track and field gold medal with victory in the 1,500.

He could also now face a two-year ban from the International Association of Athletics Federations. Under IOC rules, he also is banned from the 2012 London Olympics.

Asbel Kipruto Kiprop of Kenya stands to be upgraded from silver to gold in the 1,500. Nicolas Willis of New Zealand could go from bronze to silver, and fourth-place finisher Mehdi Baala of France would get the bronze.

The IOC previously disqualified nine athletes for doping at the Beijing Games. They included Ukrainian heptathlete Lyudmila Blonska who was stripped of her silver medal, and North Korean shooter Kim Jong Su, whose silver and bronze medals were revoked.

A sixth athlete was initially found positive in the retesting process, but women’s weightlifter Yudelquis Contreras was cleared by the Dominican Olympic Committee after the “B” sample came back negative.

Fighting for our Olympic future

Olympic sports could receive a heavy blow aimed straight at the heart if David Crawford's suggestions of government funding being aimed at more "popular" sports are adhered to.

But an Olympic lobby group made up of top administrators and athletes is not going to go down without a fight.

Heavyweight sports such as AFL, cricket and rugby are now all vying for government funding. But it could mean the end to our sporting success at the London Olympics in 2012 and beyond if we don't stand up as a nation and say that we love watching our athletes going for gold.

Being an Olympic athlete from a sport that relies heavily on government funding, I feel the Crawford Report undervalues the proud Australian Olympic movement. I'm hoping that the Minister for Sport, Kate Ellis, will be in the Olympic corner for this content.

Ms Ellis has to decide what Australians really want and what is important. Do we want to watch sports that are played frequently throughout the year? Or do we want to see our athletes mixing it with the superpowers of America, Russia and China and bringing back a swag of medals in a diverse range of sports like archery, diving or track and field?

Which events encourage the youth of today to get out there and have a go? Surely the Olympics capture the imagination of our children and inspire them to follow their dreams, particularly females who are massively underrepresented in the "popular" sports. Who could forget the emotion of Sally Mcllelan in the apparently "un-Australian" sport of the 100m hurdles at the Beijing Olympics?

The panel that constructed the Crawford Report is weighted heavily towards professional sports, with all contributors bar one (Pam Tye who is president of hockey) being linked to a football code. This to me is hugely biased.

Their argument is that sports such as surf lifesaving, AFL, rugby and surfing encompass the national psyche and the "spirit of Australia" and they will encourage more participants if funding is increased. Sure they introduce large numbers of young Australians to healthy living and life-long physical activity, but these sports also receive huge sponsorship deals through broadcasting avenues.

Without increased government funding for the next Olympics, Aussie athletes will struggle to compete against nations that fully support their athletes. Sure we do it for the love of it, but without that help we will no longer be competing on a level playing field.

Australia has a proud Olympic history and one which we need to support. We are one of only three nations to have competed at every summer Olympic Games, and a country which definitely punches above its weight.

Do we want a reoccurrence of the 1976 Montreal Olympics where there was a huge uproar after Australian athletes came home without a single gold medal?

It is known that Mr Crawford is a businessman and his success in reforming sports to make them financially sound is hugely creditable. But I'm not so sure Australians will accept this approach, especially when we are a nation that loves it when our "underdogs" become World or Olympic champions.

The effects of Olympic success reverberate across the world, leading to countless business opportunities and doors to political leaders opening.

If Mr Crawford's aims are focussed on encouraging the community to participate in sport, then diverting funding away from Olympic sports is not the answer.

As punches are thrown left, right and centre, I hope that the Australian tradition of a fair go prevails.

http://blogs.watoday.com.au/sallystandsup/2009/11/19/olympicboutto.html