Archive for the ‘Olympics’ Category
The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games Organizing Committee
The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games Organizing Committee comprises of some of the most distinguished politicians in Russia. The committee will take the responsibility of managing all events related to the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games, including execution of financial plans for the Sochi 2014 budget. The committee will not only monitor and manage the course of the Olympic objects’ development, but resolve all issues around the environment, public relations and political image. The committee is spearheaded by three members:
- Alexander Zhukov is a former deputy prime minister of Russia who was recently elected as President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) in May 2010. Before entering politics, Zhukov successfully finished his Economics and Mathematics degree at the Moscow State University. He also finished his master’s degree from the Harvard Business School in 1991. Zhukov served as vice president of the AVTOTRAKTOR Industry and became a board director for East-West Bank in 1992. He formally began his political career in 1994 when he was appointed by former acting Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin to serve as deputy head for the State Duma Financial Committee. A decade later, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov appointed Zhukov as the first Russian deputy prime minister under his rule. Prior to his appointment as head of the ROC, Zhukov has played an active role during the initial preparations for the Sochi Winter Olympic Games last year. He will take over Leonid Tyagachev’s seat after his voluntary resignation as 2010 Vancouver Olympic Committee head.
- Dmitry Kozak is the current deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation. He is famously known to his countrymen as a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kozak served as chairman of the Putin’s campaign team when the latter ran for presidency during the 2004 Russian Presidential Elections. He also became an active member of the media committee administered by the Russian government until 2008. Born in the remote village of Bondurovo located in the Kirovohrad region, Kozak served as the head of the legal department of the Monolit-Kirovstroy Company and chief legal consultant for the Russian Association of Trade Ports in 1989.
2012 Olympic Games
Are you planning on going to the London 2012 Olympics? Well if you are then you need to get a ticket and at the minute that may not be so easy.
The first wave of tickets that were issued allowed you to bid for tickets over a six-week window. You could bid for as many sessions and as many tickets as you liked. The only stipulation being that if you got all of the tickets that you applied for you were legally obliged to buy them all. So if you applied for £5,000 worth of tickets and by some lucky chance managed to get them all then you needed to have £5,000 on hand when it came to paying.
The problem and the thing that most people have found most annoying was that the money was not taken off of your Visa card straight away; it was only taken several weeks later, and even then you had to wait several more weeks after the money was taken out in order to find out what tickets you had actually got.
This led to a somewhat annoying situation of people having money taken out of their accounts without a clue as to what tickets that they had been successful in getting.
Many people applied for far more tickets than they needed on the assumption that they would only get a fraction of the ones they wanted, and indeed this has proved to be true with many people applying for around £2,000 of 2012 tickets only to get just £120 worth.
The opening ceremony and closing ceremony, as well as the major athletics finals were massively oversubscribed resulting in many people missing out. Indeed over 250,000 people that applied got no tickets at all in the first ballot.
2012 Opening Ceremony Tickets
Are you hoping to go to the 2012 opening ceremony? Well if you are then you are not alone. However all of the tickets have been sold. So how do you go about getting one?
Well unless you have very deep pockets then you are in for a struggle, but let us look at a few ways that you might get a ticket.
Corporate tickets – many of the tickets sold will have been bought by companies wanting to use them for client entertaining. So if you buy in goods or services then start dropping hints to your supplier that you would love to go to the 2012 games but have missed out on tickets. You may well find that one is forthcoming.
Or look to buy a ticket from a company from abroad such as Cosport who are handling a lot of the tickets sales from abroad. You may however need to get someone to buy them on your behalf if they will not deal direct, however try dealing with them directly in the first instance.
One of the best ways to buy them is via Thomas Cook (The games official travel partner) who are offering deals with a hotel thrown in with the price. Personally this is the route I would take to get a ticket.
There will be some more tickets released at the end of the year but it is unclear whether there will be any more opening ceremony tickets release or not. There may be a few returned tickets but they are likely to be small in number.
The one thing not to do is to buy them on the black market, as there will undoubtedly be a large number of fake tickets floating around, and you could find yourself with a wasted journey and a big expense bill if you have paid for transport and a hotel only to find you are refused admission to the games.
Looking Forward To London 2012
The Olympics have long been one of the greatest and most popular events in world sport. It is a festival of sporting events drawing people together from all disciplines, and attracting both amateurs and professionals. For many sportsmen, there will be no greater honor than receiving a gold medal at the Olympics. Following the exceptional and dramatic event which was hosted in Beijing in 2008, the games now move to the UK, and preparations are close to completion for the London Olympics 2012.
The Olympics have an almost universal popularity, and have something to offer for everyone who will be watching, whether they are in the stadium or the courses watching the sports live, or relaxing and watching the show on television.
The Most Popular Events
The Olympics are often portrayed as being games where the focus resides mainly on the athletic events. This is certainly not the case for the London Olympics 2012, as there are going to be 302 events spread across 26 sports where medals will be awarded.
It is fair to say that Athletics is one of the important events, with the final of the 100m sprint being the marquee event in the games. Nevertheless, there are also plenty of other sports which will be massively popular, including the Boxing, Cycling, Swimming, and the Rowing, where vast numbers of people will attend and watch.
Minority Sports
The London Olympics 2012 will also provide a platform for people to watch minority sports too, with examples such as Archery, BMX biking, modern pentathlon, and synchronized swimming going to be given attention on a world stage up with some of the biggest sports in the world.
1924 First Winter Olympics: Fun Facts
Chamonix 1924 First Winter Olympics: Fun Fact 1
Retrospective Designation
The French Olympic Committee organized an “International Winter Sports Week” in association with the 1924 Summer Olympics. But it was only in 1925, that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to hold Winter Olympic Games independent of the Olympic Games. As a result, the 1924 International Week of Winter Sports had its name officially changed to I Olympic Winter Games.
The First Winter Games were hosted at Les Houches, Chamonix France.
Chamonix 1924: Fun Fact 2
What happened prior?
Prior to the 1924 Winter Olympics, only some winter sports were Olympic events. For example, Ice Hockey was introduced as an Olympic Event in Antwerp in 1920 and Figure Skating was an Event at the London Olympics in 1908 and the Antwerp Olympics.
Chamonix 1924: Fun Fact 3
Last medal – 1974
The final medal for the 1924 Winter Games, was presented in 1974. A scoring error was noticed 50 years after the event and the bronze medal for ski jumping was presented to the American, Anders Haugen. He was the first American to win a ski jumping medal.
Haugen had been recorded as finishing fourth and the bronze medal had been awarded to a Norwegian skier Thorleif Haug, who also won three gold medals at the 1924 Winter Games.
In 1974, at the age of 86, Haugen traveled to Norway and was given the bronze medal by Thorleif Haug’s daughter.
Chamonix 1924: Fun Fact 4
Gold recognized in 2006
Great Britain won the Gold at the Curling event at the 1924 Winter Games, although it wasn’t recognized until 2006, 82 years later.