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U.S. officials welcome women’s boxing into 2012 Olympics
August 14th, 2009U.S. sports officials on Thursday welcomed a decision by the IOC Executive Board to include women’s boxing, canoe sprint and modern pentathlon for 2012 Olympic Games in London. «We are thrilled that the IOC Executive Committee has voted to add Read the rest of this entry “
Boycott: 1968 vs. 2008
May 6th, 2008In 1968 I was a twenty-year-old college junior whose basketball success had been made famous. I’d been honored as Player of the Year, Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament, named the USBWA Player of the Year, and played the “game of the century” against the Houston Cougars at the Houston Astrodome. Read the rest of this entry “
Record ticket demands for 2008 Olympics
May 6th, 2008The Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA) is reporting record demand for tickets to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in China by Jamaicans around the world. According to first vice-president of the JOA, Donald Anderson, the demand for tickets is shaping up to be the most on record. Read the rest of this entry “
$390M for Sochi Port Ahead of 2014 Games
May 6th, 2008Officials want to raise up to $390 million to invest in the port of Sochi, the city that last week won a contest to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, the director of a state company that manages ports said Wednesday. Rosmorport is looking at “various sources” of the money to invest before 2015, company director Yury Parfyonov said at a meeting with First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov in Novorossiisk, Interfax reported.
Ivanov announced plans to build a terminal in the port that would accommodate large cruise ships by the start of the Olympics. The ships could serve as floating hotels, Ivanov told reporters.
The government will remove a cargo terminal from the Sochi port to another location but will arrange for the terminal to handle construction materials arriving for the building of Olympic facilities, Transportation Minister Igor Levitin said in Novorossiisk. By 2015, Sochi will be a purely passenger port able to handle up to 715,000 passengers per year, Levitin said.
Authorities are also working to develop the Novorossiisk port, Levitin said. The government plans to spend 60 billion rubles ($2.35 billion) on building a new railway link to the port, he said. New highways to the port are also being planned, he said. The port handled 88 million tons of cargo last year, he said, offering no comparative figures.
In another development project, officials are studying a project to build a 70,000-ton-per-year terminal to ship liquefied natural gas at the port of Tuapse, Levitin said. The coal shipment business will move out of Tuapse to the nearby port of Taman in the future, he said.
Olympic protests over Russia’s Sochi games
May 6th, 2008It seems not everyone is happy about Russia hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. These residents, angry about plans to demolish their homes to make way for the Sochi Games, let their feelings be known during a tour by Olympic inspectors. Mobile phone footage appears to show police trying to force demonstrators onto buses at a site near the main Olympic venue.
The police have denied accusations of heavy handedness and say they were trying to prevent protestors from disrupting the IOC inspection. The Olympic delegation toured venues on the Black Sea coast and said Moscow faced a big challenge to build infrastructure in time for the event.
A concern dismissed by deputy Prime Minister Alexander Joukov who said: “Everything will be ready in time, its not even a remote possibility that we won’t be finished before the Games start. Its an event that can’t be delayed.”
Russia is spending at billions of euros to make the Black Sea resort and its surrounding mountain villages ready for the Games. Officials claim very few homes will be demolished and those owners affected will be compensated.