US Olympians have taken to social media sites including Twitter to vent their frustration they cannot publicise their sponsors who aren’t Olympic sponsors during London 2012.

400-meter gold-medal favorite Sanya Richards-Ross said athletes want a voice in the distribution of sponsorship money that currently goes directly to the IOC.

The ban is spelled out in Rule 40 of the Olympic Charter. The IOC has also issued guidelines limiting athletes’ ability to thank or promote their personal sponsors via social media and limiting what they can say in blogs or tweets.

“I just believe that the Olympic ideal and the Olympic reality are now different,” Richards-Ross said at a news conference Monday.

“Six billion dollars is being traded hands behind the scenes,” she said. “I’ve been very fortunate to do very well around the Olympics, but so many of my peers struggle in the sport, and I just think it’s unjust that they’re not being considered. Athletes are not a part of the conversation. And once again Rule 40 shows the restrictions that are put on athletes and makes the burdens even heavier for each individual athlete.

“Athletes just want to be considered. This is not just a USA issue. This is a global issue … all this money is being made.”

Richards-Ross said only 2% of U.S. athletes can tweet about their sponsors because only that small percentage has IOC or U.S. Olympic Committee sponsors.

“So that leaves out 98% of my peers,” she said. “We are disgruntled about that. We understand the IOC is protecting their sponsors, but we want to have a voice as well.”

Decathlete Ashton Eaton, who also participated in Monday’s news conference, responded with a simple “no” when asked what he thought about Richards-Ross’ campaign. The third participant, high jumper Jesse Williams, said, “Sanya did a pretty good job, I thought.”

Richards-Ross, Nick Symmonds, Darvis Patton, Bernard Lagat, Jamie Nieto and Lashinda Demus are among athletes who posted identical messages late Sunday on Twitter that said, “I am honored to be an Olympian but #WeDemandChange2012.”

Symmonds auctioned space on his arm for a promotional tattoo and got $11,000 from Hanson Dodge Creative, a design and advertising agency based in Milwaukee. He also appears in Web videos created by the agency. However, he must cover the tattoos during competitions, including the Olympics.

“People see the Olympics and see the two weeks when athletes are at their best. It’s the most glorious time in our lives. But like I said, they don’t see the three or four years leading up to the Olympic Games when a lot of my peers are struggling to stay in the sport,” Richards-Ross said. “The majority of track and field athletes don’t have sponsors and don’t have support to stay in the sport. A lot of my peers have second and third jobs to be able to do this, and that’s just unfortunate.”

RightView Pro, rx a teaching tool to help improve, ed define and standardize instruction, has partnered with United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA) to to bring video analysis solutions to the baseball and softball players.

“We are very proud to align with a pioneering leader in softball and baseball instruction. RightView Pro has set the standard for integrity in instruction over the last decade,” said Don DiDonatis, Commissioner – USSSA.

Originated by former Major Leaguer Don Slaught, RightView Pro was started in 2001 after Slaught had accepted a baseball coaching position at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School. “I wanted to show my players what the best hitters in the world were doing, and I discovered very quickly that I needed a coaching tool,” Slaught said. “I was dealing with 60 kids in a two-hour practice, and I needed a quick easy way to show my players exactly what they were doing vs what the best hitters and pitchers in the game were doing.” Slaught goes onto say, “I quickly learned that it’s much easier to show than it is to explain.”

Consequently, Slaught went to Major League Baseball and the Player’s Association and expressed the need to create a product that would help coaches at all levels communicate and breakdown the swing at a speed that can be understood more effectively, while using Major League Baseball hitting models to compare against. Slaught found that video analysis helped to provide the proof that hitters prepare to swing differently but become virtually the same prior to swinging the bat. Through video analysis it was also revealed that hitters don’t squish bugs, don’t swing down and hitters don’t leave weight on their back foot. After consulting with Major League Baseball, work began on the first software program in conjunction with MLB. Today, the 10-year old company has greatly expanded and offers a full line of instructional and analysis systems for the part-time coach, all the way up to to college, international, and professional teams.

Some notable RVP users include the most recent Major League Baseball World Series Champions, the 2010 San Francisco Giants, 2007 Boston Red Sox, 2005 Chicago White Sox, 2004 Boston Red Sox, 2006 American League Champion Detroit Tigers, and the back to back NCAA Baseball Champions South Carolina Baseball.

by Ismail Uddin

Sepp Blatter has confirmed that FIFA will interview the whistleblower who claims US$1.5m bribes were paid to two members of world soccer’s governing body’s Executive Committee by the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid.

Blatter declined to rule out re-running the vote for the 2022 tournament, following the astonishing bid bribery allegations made during a UK parliamentary inquiry into soccer governance last week.

“We have organised and the newspaper (The Sunday Times) have agreed we will bring this whistleblower to Zurich and then we will have a discussion, an investigation,” Blatter was quoted by Reuters on Thursday.

He added: “I haven’t identified the general whistleblower, for the time being, we have no name – if it is man, or woman.

“It will be the relevant authorities, in FIFA which handles such cases, the secretary general [Jerome Valcke].”

Several independent sources claim that the whistleblower is a former media officer with the Qatar bid. Amadou Diallo, a close friend to Blatter’s presidential challenger Mohamed Bin Hammam, was accused in written evidence of facilitating the Qatar bribes to Issa Hayatou and Jacques Anouma. 

Both Ex-Co members have vigorously denied the allegations as has the Qatar Football Association. The Sunday Times corruption evidence was based on a covert conversation with former FIFA secretary general, Michel Zen-Ruffinen, who told undercover reporters that Diallo worked for Qatar “to arrange financial deals with African members in exchange for World Cup votes”.

If the allegations of bribery against Hayatou and Anouma are proven, Blatter raised the prospect of a revote on the 2022 World Cup host. Under this scenario, the other 2022 candidates – USA, Japan, South Korea and Australia – could yet win hosting rights.

Blatter was quoted by Press Association Sport, saying: “This is an idea circulating already around the world which is alarming. Don’t ask me yes or no, let us go step by step.”

It was revealed last week that Diallo was a longstanding FIFA employee, working from around 1999 to 2007, “paid by FIFA on a Goal Bureau chairman budget with the task of monitoring Goal projects”.

The chairman of English nPower Championship soccer side Crystal Palace, Steve Parish, has insisted that Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur’s legal challenge to their failure to secure the Olympic Park Stadium site will be unsuccessful.

The London club’s chairman has insisted that his club will press on with plans to re-locate to the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre (NSC) site.

As a main aspect of their bid to inherit the Olympic Stadium, Tottenham proposed to revamp the NSC site for the purposes of athletics, and have now asked their lawyers to investigate how binding the recommendations made by the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), which chose West Ham United to take over the Olympic Stadium post-2012, really are.

However, Parish remains convinced that Tottenham’s enquiries into an appeal – with a view to launching a costly judicial review – will be fruitless, stating in an interview with the Croydon Advertisers: “None of their fans want it, no one wants it. It’s just not going to happen.

“The recommendations by the OLPC were all approved and rubber stamped. I just can’t see anyway they would overturn that decision.”

Parish and his partners are currently in the process of trying to arrange a meeting with the London Development Agency (LDA) who hold the lease for the site at Crystal Palace.

“It’s a very difficult process but we are still positive we can make it happen. I seem to have spent the last couple of months in various meetings with all sorts of different people.

“The key thing for us to do now is sit down with the LDA. They are the current lease holders and we won’t be able to get much further unless we can arrange a deal with them.

“But I think we’re getting somewhere with that and hope to meet them in the next few weeks. It’s been tough, such a huge public project was always likely to be. 

“We do have a plan B that we’ve been working on as well which is to redevelop Selhurst Park. But I’m still confident that won’t be needed.

“I’m very keen to make this happen and believe we can do it.”

Chris Mater, therapy the Red Bull USA Head of Sports Marketing, has taken a new role with the company by becoming the General Manager of its Northern California business unit.

He will oversee business, sales, marketing, distribution and legal from central California to Oregon. He is working out of Red Bull’s Bay Area offices. 

Sean Eggert has taken Mater’s position as head of sports marketing at Red Bull.

Mater said, “I love working in sports marketing but from a personal and a professional perspective, I want to run the business and it was a requirement to learn sales and distribution. Fortunately for me, they did a restructure and created these regional general manager roles that allowed me to go from have less responsibility but overseeing a broader area to have much more responsibility in a smaller area.”

Mater, who is Australian, joined Red Bull in 1999 and was part of the company’s launch in that country. He relocated to the U.S. in 2004 and took over as head of sports marketing in North America in 2007. 

Cardiff are set to bid for the 2026 Commonwealth Games, according to BBC.

A draft of the latest plans for a bid promises to “develop a bid to host the Commonwealth Games that in itself delivers immediate and lasting benefits”.

First Minister Carwyn Jones confirmed last month that consultants are working on detailed technical advice on potential venues in Cardiff.

The draft plan states that “Cardiff’s track record of delivering major sporting and cultural events has brought the city a number of benefits. It is therefore appropriate that the administration has the aspiration for Cardiff to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games. The city’s major event strategy for the next five years will provide a roadmap for realizing this aspiration whilst delivering immediate and lasting benefits, whatever the outcome of our bid”.

The document sets out a four-point strategy for the bid planning process over the next four years.

The Welsh government is supporting the program leading up to a bid, and has appointed consultants to review the technical details of potential venues. 

In a written answer to the assembly in January, First Minister Carwyn Jones, said that study should be completed by April.

“We will continue to work with partners on a potential bid and will take full account of the costs and benefits of the 2014 games in Glasgow ahead of any final decision regarding a bid.”

The last time the city hosted the event was in 1958, when it was known as the Empire Games, when 35 nations descended on Cardiff Arms Park for the opening ceremony, with more than 1,000 athletes taking part.

The London organising committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) have confirmed that an extra 3,000 tickets were sold last night for today’s events following public outcry over empty seats at the Olympics.

The lack of seats being filled at venues across London 2012 was highlighted over the opening weekend, prompting London Mayor Boris Johnson to claim that more tickets are likely to be sold to the public over the next fortnight. 

It is understood that 3,000 tickets were sold after a host of sports federations returned their tickets, 1,000 of which were for the gymnastics event. 

Locog are believed to have stated that tickets are likely to go on sale to the public the evening before the day’s events.

Jackie Brock-Doyle, Locog’s director of communications, said: “We talked to the International Federations yesterday, we were able to put back into the pot for sale around 3,000 tickets last night, they have all been sold,” she said.

“That includes about 600 for the gymnastics event today and we’re going to do that on a day-to-day basis.”

Discuss the empty seats and ticketing system here

 

British Horseracing Authority (BHA), the regulatory and governing body for horse racing in Great Britain has agreed a partnership with Presagia with the athlete health management system  providing on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis that the BHA will use to record, track, and analyze injuries and other medical data for licensed jockeys.

Horse racing is big business in Great Britain – it is the second biggest spectator sport after football, with an annual economic impact of more than £3.4 billion ($5.2 billion USD) according to Deloitte’s ‘Economic Impact of British Racing 2009’ study. The attention and stakes involved puts a lot of pressure on the BHA and their work to support the health of the jockeys and the sport.

The BHA collaborated with Presagia to configure Presagia Sports for the unique needs of the sport. The solution provides a consistent framework for its 238 doctors to track falls, injuries and health status for the more than 800 jockeys that compete at 60 different racecourses across Great Britain. The British Horseracing Authority preside over 1,456 fixtures per year, 40% of which are Jump racing fixtures where, on average, a jockey will have one fall every 14 rides. Presagia Sports has allowed the BHA to transition from a legacy paper-based system that had been used for more than 25 years, to a sophisticated and centralized database that is accessible anytime, anywhere over the Internet.

“The BHA reviewed a number of different systems before choosing Presagia, the only system that was able to fulfil all of the key requirements of this professional sport,” states Paul Lifton, Statistical & IT Analyst at the BHA. “The system had to ensure that busy racecourse medical teams could easily view and update the jockey’s medical database in real time.”

“It had to be simple to use, secure, robust and flexible enough to cope with all the special requirements of a sport that takes place nationwide, on every day of the year,” explains Dr. Michael Turner, the BHA’s Chief Medical Advisor. “Above all the system needed to allow the medical teams in the field to manage and share all this information in real time with the London-based BHA Medical Department.”

With the new system in place, the BHA expects to see major improvements in its workflow and record keeping processes, as well as in its ability to perform statistical analysis on medical data.

by Ismail Uddin