AIPS Prize for London 2012 Media and Promotion for Newcombe

April 18, 2013

By Keir Radnedge

Britain has celebrated a media win double at AIPS Congress in the 2014 Winter Olympic Games host city of Sochi.

Barry Newcombe, long-serving chairman of the UK Sports Journalists’ Association, was voted on to the executive committee of the international sports journalists’ association while Jayne Pearce collected its award, on behalf of London 2012, as best media facilities of 2012.

Newcombe had run for membership of the 19-strong executive twice before without success. He said: “I am proud and honoured to have been voted on to the executive and I’ll do my best to justify the confidence shown in e by our international colleagues.

“AIPS does a remarkable job and I’m looking forward to sharing in the work which is undeniably considerable across many areas of sports journalism. I am also aware that the SJA is Europe’s most significant supporters of AIPS through our many hundreds of card-holders.”

Re-elected unopposed for further four-year terms were Italy’s Gianni Merlo as president and Turkey’s Esat Yilmaer as first vice-president.

Congress was opened formally on Monday by a high-level host delegation led by Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko. It closes tonight after a variety of presentations and visits to the outstanding venues of the coastal and mountain clusters for next February’s Games.

Among the presentations to congress from international sports federations, events and host cities was an insight from Nenad Lalovic, acting president of the world wrestling federation FILA, about its last-minute fight to try to retain its place on the Olympic programme from 2020.