Congratulations! You’re a 2016 Rio Olympics medal-winner! Quite the difference from being, say, merely a lottery-winner, gained from sheer dumb luck – admittedly in the face of odds heavily stacked in favor of the House – rather than years and years of training to get to the top of your chosen branch of athletics.

In actuality, though, there’s often no difference at all between the two. It simply depends on your country’s particular tax-regime You’ve just very publicly received a nice chunk of money, after all, whether via dumb luck or no. A government – often more than one – is likely interested in demanding a piece of it.

As you see, the Belgian paper La Libre Belgique recently devoted a bit of space and one of its writers (no by-line) to this issue of the tax-status of the money its athletes gain win they win Olympic medals. First of all, such prizes are paid by the national federation of the athlete, so they differ by country. For Belgium the pay-outs are as follows: (for individual events) €50,000 for gold, €30,000 for silver and €20,000 for bronze; for team events, it’s €12,500/€7,500/€5,000. Further individual event competitors who place fourth get €10,000, fifth get €5,000.

You might think the government most interested would be that of Brazil, but no: another piece in the Dutch business newspaper Het Financiele Dagblad (behind a paywall) reveals that Brazil has waived any taxes on the amounts Olympic winners receive. (Is this a general rule among countries hosting the Games? You might think so; there is no information here either way.)

At least this means that taxation on these winnings will be determined solely by an athlete’s country of nationality. Here the anti-Double Taxation treaty Belgium concluded with Brazil back in 1972 prescribes that such finanical gains for Belgians operating in Brazil will be taxed according to the Brazilian authorities, and not again by the Belgian government. But, to repeat, the Brazilian authorities have waived any tax. So Belgian athletes are in luck.

The La Libre Belgique piece also claims there is no anti-Double Taxation Treaty between the Netherlands and Brazil – surprisingly. So Dutch athletes do have their winnings taxed, as income. And the HFD piece (behind paywall) also states that the prize-money amounts are less there: only €19,125 for an individual gold, €12,750 for silver, €9.350 for team gold. Of course, presumably there is support from the Dutch athletic federations (probably underwritten to some extent by the government) for training and being able to live without a day-job during that training, but that is surely the case in Belgium as well.

This year is, of course, 2016 – an even year. I like even years or, rather, I regard odd years with dread. For in those odd-numbered years, the European football seasons routinely terminate towards the end of May as usual, and then the following weeks pass within what is for me a hazy mental cloud of wondering how to pass my time, indeed of wondering why I am even here. Even years, on the other hand, always manage to fill this particular period with meaning, with purpose, via the great football tournaments, either the World Cup or – this year – the European Championship.

You might object, “Well, you only need to make it to the beginning of July – then you have the Tour de France!” Yes, but that always strikes quite a different sort of note. The football tournaments are drama; the Tour de France, in contrast, is comedy.

Or perhaps I should specify further: The Tour de France is of course farce. No need to get very “in” to it, to recognize or memorize the rider who might happen to “win” it: sooner or later his accomplishment will be rescinded due to revealed doping of one sort or another. This ultimately makes the phenomenon only interesting in that faint way that WWE (that is, professional “wrestling”) matches are interesting: you can only marvel at how people can take so seriously something that is obviously so fake.

Now we have reports that a completely different problem has arisen to erode the Tour’s credibility further: that of hidden motors installed to provide competing riders with a bit of mechanical assistance.

This first came up last January at the world cyclo-cross championships in Belgium, where the Belgian favorite in the women’s under-23 event, one Femke van den Driessche, was indeed disqualified for having used a small motor installed on her rear wheel.

The officials in charge of this year’s Tour de France are ready to prevent any sort of monkey-business like that from occurring. This was announced today by no less than France’s Secretary of State for Sports, Thierry Braillard, who stated that there would be an extensive system of thermal cameras to catch such hidden motors. In fact, for some reason it is the French Atomic Energy Agency (CEA, in French) that will be installing them – yep, that’s what the article says – cameras so sensitive that even motors not in use will be detectable. Apparently, experiments run this past weekend gave these officials confidence that they will work as promised.

“It is very important that we can detect a cheat,” as the president of the Union of International Cyclists, Brian Cookson, pointed out at today’s very same press-conference. Well, yes . . . I guess, although the Tour does not have a very good record in doing so, or at least in detecting cheats in time to actually deny them the glory of appearing on the victor’s podium at the Tour’s end. Then again, its officials are fighting against the inexorable advance of science, after all – medical science, and now, mechanical and miniaturization science.

This is further a “special” year in that, shortly after the Tour is wound up, the Summer Olympics start in Brazil. And again we will have a classic WWE-type farce; indeed, from the turmoil that has already gone on about doping in athletics – including, of course, the exclusion of the entire Russian track and field team – the Tour will surely only be the appetizer to a veritable feast of cat-and-mouse intrigue in Rio between cheating athletes and those who are responsible for catching them.

It will be amusing, no doubt – but, as usual, nothing to take very seriously.

Take a good look at the below tableau: Such a scene of triumph and female empowerment, smiles all around, the Russian flag wielded like a blanket and the (bizarre, disjointed) logo of the 2012 London Summer Games looming off to the left.

Sadly, as was revealed to the world not so long ago – by the WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency – if that Russian flag stands for anything these days, it stands for a state-sponsored campaign of deliberate cheating at international athletics competitions through doping and other artificial (and banned) chemical advantages. The two “athletes” pictured here, track-and-field runners Mariya Savinova and Ekaterina Poistogova, were both on a list of five published in November for which the WADA recommended a lifetime ban from any further competitions. (As you will further be aware, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) also banned all Russian track-and-field athletes from the upcoming Rio Olympic Games.)

Gee, people pay billions to build facilities and throw a a high-level athletics party (OK, “competition”), invite you to come join in – and then you cheat! Not being especially grateful for the hospitality there, wouldn’t you agree? That may be why, as the Volkskrant reports here, the British athletic federation, UK Athletics, has just put out a quite remarkable anti-doping proposal, entitled “Manifesto for Clean Athletics.” Here are the introductory words of Chairman Ed Warner:

Greater transparency, tougher sanctions, longer bans – and even resetting the clock on world records for a new era – we should be open to do whatever it takes to restore credibility in the sport. And at the heart must be a proper and appropriate funding regime for the anti-doping authorities to help confront the new challenges they face. Clean athletes the world over deserve nothing less.

“Greater transparency” means recording all doping-checks and their results in an open register, according to this proposal; “tougher sanctions, longer bans” means establishing a minimum ban of eight years for cheaters. There are a number of other interesting suggestions here as well (e.g. if your athlete is caught cheating, you as a federation compensate the lost prize-money to those athletes of other federations who were honest) which you can read, in English, on the UK Athletics website. But the one that particularly catches the eye, of course, is erasing all athletic records and just starting over. Why not indeed? (more…)

This week sees the qualification rounds, to be held in Berlin, for the volleyball competition that will be part of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games later this year. The German team coach, Vital Heynen (himself of Belgian nationality, as you can perhaps tell by the name), has a lengthy interview in the leading German newspaper Die Welt.

By all accounts, he’s done a good job, and the German team is confident about its chances. Then again, I’m not so interested in volleyball, German or otherwise. I would have passed this bit of news entirely by had it not been for that text-fragment in the tweet: “You Germans are not proud of Germany!”

Yes, the quote comes from Heynen. What would cause him to say something like that? Here is the wider context from the interview:

The problem of Germany is that it is no sports-country, it has no sports-culture. Hamburg’s decision to not apply for the [Olympic] Games [of 2024] hit me right in the heart. I cannot understand it. The Olympic motto for 2012 was “Proud of Germany”; I’m telling you now, you are not proud of Germany, when you have a country of which one really could be proud.

(That 2012 motto must have been in connection with Leipzig’s application to host those particular summer games. Leipzig got nowhere in the bidding, which of course was won by London, for whose Games the motto was “Inspire a Generation.”)

No “sports-country”; no “sports-culture.” Because the German taxpayer has picked up a new reluctance even to bid for the right to host Olympic games!

Heynen may think that his position gives him a privileged platform to comment on German athletic affairs generally, but he is likely wrong. The citizens of Hamburg voted last September to withdraw their bid, but those of Boston had done the same thing just two months earlier.

Indeed, is staging the Olympic Games – whether summer or winter – something any reasonably democratically run polity is going to want to undertake from here on out? It’s an awful big drain on public monies, all for a bit over a month of concentrated world-attention – and then the long hangover of an expensive collection of white-elephant athletics buildings for which permanent alternative uses are hard to find. The 2004 Games certainly gave Greece a good shove down the path of public insolvency, while there has already been and will certainly continue to be widespread dissatisfaction in Brazil over all the public money spent on this year’s Summer Games, especially given the recent sharp downturn in Brazil’s economic fortunes – and given the strong whiff of public corruption whose revelation has accompanied that downturn.

Clearly, staging the Olympics is a project not for democratic localities but rather for the undemocratic variety, where there is no public accountability for the vast sums of public money required. The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics – the most expensive in history, by far – clearly had as their main function being a conduit for Putin to divert government money to his friends and supporters. The 2008 Peking Games, for all we know, fulfilled a similar function, as will surely the 2022 Winter Games, also to be held in that world-renowned center for winter sports, Beijing.

Of course, even if the democratic world sensibly starts to leave hosting the Olympics to the autocrats, that still means condemning a series of national populations to misappropriation of their tax monies. Far better to harken back to the Games’ original spirit, to the very name Olympics, and start hosting the Games (at least the Summer version) permanently in their spiritual country of origin, namely Greece, in Athens. There is a good collections of purpose-built buildings still there just dying to be properly used again.

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi are almost upon us, and it’s safe to say that the overwhelming feeling for outsiders is one of trepidation. That the Winter Games will take place in an area usually designated geographically as “sub-tropical” is but humorous; that they will be located within a region where Russia has been struggling since the fall of the Soviet Union with violent local independence movements is a much more serious proposition. And the violent groups that will want to disrupt the Olympics were clever in sowing such fear by their twin attacks around Christmas in the near-by (by Russian standards) city of Volgograd, which killed a combined total of 34 people.

The Dutch are no slouches when it comes to winter sports, so there will be a sizeable contingent from the Netherlands at the Sochi games, together with an official visit by King Willem Alexander and Queen Máxima, Premier Mark Rutte and other high officials. Will those representatives be safe there? The newspaper Trouw tries to set its readers’ fears at ease today with an article entitled The Netherlands will keep a close eye on Sochi security.

The author (uncredited; from the Dutch press agency ANP) hardly aids his/her own cause with a column-heading that reads “Possible attacks.” Still, what’s notable here is not what the Netherlands is doing, but the listing of some of the security provisions some other nations will be taking.

• The Americans: They have posted two Navy ships just offshore in the Black Sea – the better to start evacuating American citizens should things start to go haywire onshore.
• The French: They are actually sending special anti-terror police along to guard their athletes. And not just one variety, but two: the GIGN, “specialized in ending hostage situations” (OK, that’s a relief), and the RAID*, “an elite corps of the national police.”

Sadly, once you read about those steps the Americans and French are taking, the corresponding Dutch measures cannot help but strike you as rather inadequate. They include an official warning from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that everyone needs to be careful:

. . . it turns out that possible attacks in Russia, above all in city centers and South Russia, must be taken into account. You are advised when traveling in Russia to be extra-vigilant, above all at locations such as bus- and train stations, airfields or when traveling with public transport.

Oh, and if you do get into trouble, the Dutch Embassy will be open 24/7! Of course, that is way off in Moscow; but there will also be a “consular window” available at the Holland Heineken House there in Sochi.

Don’t worry, it goes on, “[c]alamity plans have been coordinated and scenarios worked out.” So if there is violence at the Winter Olympics, the Dutch government will at least be able rather easily to imagine what is happening!

The point? Is it that the Netherlands – and every other country sending substantial numbers of its athletes to the Games, for that matter – should emulate French or American practice and send along, in effect, para-military bodyguards? No, it’s that things have reached the point – resulting from the ill-considered (and almost certainly corrupt) decision to put the 2014 Winter Games here in the first place – that such worries are arising at all.

* A brilliant acronym, you’ll surely agree! It actually stands for Recherche, d’Assistance, d’Intervention et de Dissuasion – Investigation, Assistance, Intervention and Dissuasion.

Here at €S we greeted the oncoming prospect of the London 2012 Olympic Games with an examination of whether it really makes sense economically for a city to host them, which came to the daring conclusion: “It depends.” Now they are over – do we have any preliminary verdict?

Well, there is one from Michel de Poncins of the French on-line commentary site Contretemps, and it is grim:

Les JO de Londres : vers la ruine ? La cérémonie de clôture des JO de Londres a mis dimanche un terme aux fest… http://t.co/OeA9SNfA

August 14, 2012 7:30 am via Social Proxy by MailchimpReplyRetweetFavorite

@Contrepoints

Contrepoints

Vers la ruine? – “towards ruin?” De Poncins asks, and his lede is no more cheery:

The closing ceremony of the London Olympic Games on Sunday put an end to the festivities. Now it’s the hour of drawing up the balance. Were these Games once more a financial catastrophe?

After all, let’s remember that Montréal was still paying for staging the 1976 Summer Games some thirty years later, while the 2004 Games undoubtedly accelerated Greece’s slide into sovereign bankruptcy.

So what about London? First of all, there is Games’ official price-tag: €11 billion. That in itself, claims De Poncins, came in at four times what it originally was supposed to cost. In a sense, though, that doesn’t really matter – because even that €11 billion hardly covers the true cost, which is not really calculable but must be supplemented by “an unknown quantity of adjacent expenses.” Besides, ordinary tourist traffic for the hotels was noticeably lower in London during the Games, and a price must also be added for all the inconvenience they caused to simply getting around the city, during the Games themselves but also during all the construction leading up to them.

Clearly, what we have here is what you could term an “Olympics Scrooge”: De Poncin’s focus is solely on the money-costs, whose extent he claims is unknowable, even while he ignores the less tangible but still potentially substantial benefits that can be accrued from the Olympics of boosting a given city’s image. As we saw in our previous treatment, that certainly was the case for Barcelona in 1992 and even for Munich in 1972 to some degree, despite the massacre of the Israeli athletes. There’s no reason to think a similar effect was missing here; the Games themselves seemed to have been run very well, and press accounts describe even a sort of euphoria eventually taking hold among Londoners over what was going on.

So this isn’t meant to be your most-unbiased accounting of whether the 2012 Games gave to London more than they demanded. Indeed, M. de Poncin has a particular axe to grind: He focuses on costs because he is against governmental spending on the Olympics – or on sport in general – in any form! Olympics lead to unemployment, don’t you know: the greater government spending involved must be supported by higher taxes, which depress the economy, throwing people out of work, etc.

That’s where they are coming from on this Contretemps site. And you can tell, because they now have a second article up on the London Olympics – “A celebration of the virtues of competition.” Lede:

The economy functions in the same way as an Olympic competition. Rivalry tends to make everyone better. And no enterprise or no country can maintain an advantage indefinitely.

Hooray! The London 2012 Olympic Games formally open today! Although of course some athletes have already been in action even from Wednesday, mainly the football players.

Let me repeat, though, that this blog is generally not interested, certainly not in the athletics. Attention is more likely to be attracted here by catchy and notable Olympic-related headlines – All of London sells itself to sponsors, is a good example.

That’s the title of the kick-off report for a series that the German journalist Imke Henkel (a female, FYI; her winsome smile you can inspect at the article’s very top if you click through) is undertaking for the German newsmagazine Focus, by heading to London to write an “Olympic Diary.” This first installment is all about the sponsorship madness that seems to have descended upon the city.

Or perhaps even – although naturally the term is grossly over-used – the sponsorship fascism. You might have already heard about that Cafe Olympic – located within sight of the new Olympic Stadium, actually – that has been forced to rename itself “Cafe Lympic” for the duration of the Games. That ain’t the half of it, though; Henkel actually provides a list of words that businesses are henceforth (through 12 August) not allowed to display, which go beyond any variation of the word “Olympic” to include “Summer,” “2012,” and of course “Gold,” “Silver” and “Bronze.” Lilagekleidete Aufpasser – translates as “Purple-clad monitors” – are even now roaming the streets, in London but also all over the UK, ensuring that any violations are reported for prompt sanction by LOCOG, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. (more…)

As everyone knows by now, the 2012 London Olympics open in just two days’ time. This blog is not so very interested, at least from an athletics point-of-view, although perhaps noteworthy incidents might still arise.

Meanwhile, Christian Hönicke from the German business newspaper Handelsblatt approaches the Games from a proper business perspective to expound on How metropolises profit from the Olympics. Yes, the medals-won table is already there over on the right side (all zeros for now, of course; “Afghanistan,” “Albania,” and right on through) and Hönicke’s piece is regularly interrupted by mini-accounts of past medal-winners, but the text itself provides a good treatment of the question: “Is it worth it for a city to host the Games?” (more…)

The World Anti-Doping Agency just yesterday added to the list it maintains of countries who do not comply with its guidelines . . . wait for it . . . Great Britain, which as we all know is no less than the host for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games! This word comes from an article in today’s De Morgen, a Flemish newspaper.

Now, at this point the report cannot be confirmed at source, namely at the WADA’s website. Yes, they do post the news there that the organization presented its “Compliance Report” to something called its “Foundation Board” yesterday (working on a Sunday; hmm . . .), at which point it also had its 2012 budget confirmed (frozen from 2011, apparently). But I could not find that Compliance Report available anywhere on that same website; it certainly is not on their “Publications” webpage, and there’s also no mention of who is now on the compliance blacklist and who is not on another page about something called the “Code Compliance Assessment Survey.”

The really remarkable aspect of this report – if true – is why the UK is now being put on this WADA blacklist – joining about fifty other lands – in the first place. It’s not that they have suddenly started to coddle athletes who cheat. Quite the contrary: the British Olympic Committee has voted to ban any athlete caught doping from competitions that it stages for life. In this it took up an idea from the International Olympic Committee – which the latter, however, never implemented after complaints from the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The British Committee, however, did; this ban is now in effect in competitions under its jurisdiction for anyone caught doping. But banning-for-life does not conform to WADA standards – as with the Court of Arbitration, it is too strict! So the British go on the blacklist; the article mentions that they could even lose their awarding of next year’s Olympic Games! Surely that latter prospect is purely theoretical, but WADA Chairman John Fahey still remarked for the press:

It’s a shame that things have had to come so far. To the Court of Arbitration’s decision we reacted in a correct manner and asked the British to review their viewpoint, but they refuse all discussion. It’s not for me to decide what must happen now. There are quite a few countries on the list and we will assist them all to come back into conformity.

Sorry – it’s the Olympics again! I swear that I’ll go find some other hobby-horse right after this post, but I just happened to come across an article in El País – and you know I don’t ordinarily discuss the Spanish press – with the irresistible title Olympic Dream Maybe, But “Low Cost”, by Bruno García Gallo (the “rooster”).

You’ll be glad to know that this is not about the Winter Games again (although with the tropically-situated Sochi, Russia having won them for 2014, why not?), but rather the 2020 Summer Games. And yes, Madrid is still interested in those even after having lost in the last two Summer Game bids – somewhat. Polls showed a full 91% of madrileños were behind the city’s bid for the 2012 Games, as compared to only 68% of Londoners. But the latter won anyway. It was a similar situation for the 2016 Games, which Madrid nonetheless lost to Rio de Janeiro. Still, as of last year at least 54% are ready to have a go again, as are all the city’s leading politicians. (more…)

Pyeongchang! Congratulations!

Er – Gesundheit! What’s that you say? Why that’s Pyeongchang, not a city at all strictly-speaking, but a county, located in the east part of South Korea, and the locale which was chosen yesterday to be the host of the 2018 Winter Olympics. Maybe/probably you don’t know it now; you’ll know the name enough by, say, March of 2018.

With their victory, the South Koreans left behind in their dust their other two main competitors for this designation, namely Munich/Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany, of course) and Annecy (in the French Alps, right by the Swiss border). But don’t labor under any mistaken impression that Pyeongchang ran away with the competition based on any super-spectacular presentation they made earlier this week before the International Olympic Committee’s conclave in Durban, South Africa. No no no – as a quite informative article by Friedhard Teuffel in Der Tagesspiegel points out (Fiddling your way to Olympic victory, reprinted in Die Zeit as Race of the string-pullers), every one of those 110 IOC members charged with voting on the matter had certainly made up his/her mind before the presentations even started. (more…)

Yes, as if you don’t have enough to worry about these days . . . but the decision-process is now starting to get in gear for who will get to host the 2018 Winter Olympics! We’re reminded of this by Evi Simeoni with her article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, brought out on the occasion of the recent deadline for submission of official “bid-books” from candidate cities to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Understandably, Ms. Simeoni is particularly interested in Munich’s bid for the honor, which was delivered to Lausanne in person (because that’s simply what you do) earlier this week along with the documents of competitors Annecy (France) and Pyeongchang (South Korea). What follows from this point is inspections by the IOC’s Evaluation Committee to each site (to happen 1-3 March for the Bavarians), followed by formal presentations at the Lausanne headquarters on 18-19 May and the announcement of the decision at an IOC meeting in Durban, South Africa, on 6 July. (more…)

For your information, the tenth (sorry: “X”) Winter Paralympics begin today, also in Vancouver, Canada. Here’s the homepage. (By the way, if you do take a look and your eye happens to catch the headline to this article about the Torch Relay – actually, a YouTube video – be careful not to misinterpret: they’re not getting squeamish about the Relay, rather, the article is about the Relay reaching the town of Squamish, British Columbia.)

To mark the occasion, the German paper Handelsblatt features on its website this interview by a reporter from some Sports Information Service (German abbreviation SID) with the President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), the Briton Sir Philip Craven – who is apparently disabled himself, traveling around in a wheelchair, and also a past paralympic athlete of some note. By and large the transcript is rather humdrum – e.g. how did Sir Philip like the just-concluded Winter Olympics, which nation’s team does he expect to win the most medals at the Paralympic Games, and the like. But one exchange does stand out for me:

SID: “Turin 2006 [i.e. the last Paralympics] had no doping-cases. Do you think this will be different this time?”

Craven: “I hope not. We’re working together very closely with the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada)and continue to emphasize the educational aspect of this work. And it’s clear: If there should be cheaters, they’ll be caught and punished.”

I get it: There will probably be no doping-cheaters turning up at these Paralympic Games. And I have to say that I’m rather relieved to learn that.

One other thing: at the end of the interview the two discuss the recent application made by some snowboarding federation for snowboarding to become an official paralympic sport. Can somebody please explain (or draw a diagram) how paralympic snowboarding is supposed to work? If you e-mail me something, I promise I’ll add it to this post as an Update, with credit to you.

This post is intended as a shout-out to Jay, to Letterman, to comedy-writing staffs everywhere. Here’s the deal: I give you the straight line, culled from a real live news-piece – Women’s curling team receives psychological help, reports the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten – and you take it from there. It doesn’t have to mean sending me your women’s curling jokes (it wouldn’t have to be “Danish”) by e-mail*; I’d be satisfied just with hearing a good one – just one! – from Leno’s monologue, or simply having it come back home here to Papa through the Internets somehow.

This choice of topic is not accidental, although its further elaboration in the Danish press is serendipitous. And to a great extent I am offering my find here in gratitude for some great introductory curling material already enjoyed. I’m referring specifically to Letterman, Wednesday night, February 17, and his material could also be of help in providing some background for those of you who may have no idea what this Olympic sport of “curling” is all about.

In curling, they get a 40 lb. granite stone and send it down the ice and then they sweep the debris from in front of it. It’s all the fun of shuffleboard, plus household chores.

(more…)

As we can with most of the rest of the world’s newspapers, it looks like those of us who can read German can currently enjoy extensive on-line coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics . . . yes, from the Financial Times Deutschland! Okay . . . but just as would be the case if Sports Illustrated ever decided to expand its news coverage to international bond markets, you have to wonder how successfully the publication in question can bring off the task of either finding or cultivating internally the sort of expertise needed to report in a credible manner on such subjects so far outside of its core competence. In the FTD’s case things are not helped by the apparent lack of reporters’ by-lines attached to the Winter Olympics articles.

Prompted by these concerns – and, to be honest, also by my essential indifference to the pure sport element of the events now happening in and around Vancouver anyway – I’d like to highlight for your consideration this interesting piece covering one mass outdoor sporting activity in which the FTD does boast extensive experience: scrimmages between demonstrators and riot police. A further consideration prompting me to do this is the concern that coverage of such ugly scenes on the Games’ periphery will be downplayed or even omitted entirely by the media (especially TV) that my readers might rely on for their “mainstream” news coverage. (more…)

Did you catch those violent scenes on the news this past weekend? Sure, there are violent scenes going on at any given time at many places throughout the world, but these were headlined by the spectacular shooting-down of a police helicopter. (Remember the video of that?) At least 16 dead, with many burning vehicles, as heavily-armed police moved against the local drug-mafia in the favelas, or slums, of Rio de Janeiro.

Wait a second . . . isn’t that the same city that just recently was awarded the right to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games? Indeed it is, as Gerhard Dilger points out in his brief commentary-piece in Berlin’s Tageszeitung or taz: Alarm in the Olympic-city. That sort of bloodshed just won’t do while the Olympics are going on, but at this stage it’s difficult to imagine how it can be stopped: the author cites casualties of 100 people per month at the hands of Rio’s militarized police.

Well, Dilger concludes that it’s simply time for Brazilian politicians, from President Lula da Silva on down, to start imagining harder. A cheap answer is simply to call off the police and let the drug-gangs operate unhindered; while he does not go so far as to advocate that, he does urge thinking hard about how this sort of repression is responsible for making the drug trade so lucrative in the first place. In effect – although he does not state it explicitly – he is advocating drug legalization for Brazil.

At the same time, there needs to be a massive infusion of public investment in those favelas to produce schools, hospitals, public housing, etc. to address the wide gap between rich and poor in Brazilian society that results in the illegal activity that prompts such violence. World cities know anyway when they submit their bids to host the Olympic Games that they need to be ready to make tremendous investments in supporting infrastructure should they succeed in winning them. Dilger asserts here that not only is the same is true for Rio, but that hosting the 2016 Games is a Riesenchance – a gigantic chance – to summon the political will even to go beyond Olympic facility investments to undertake initiatives designed to heal the very real clefts remaining in Brazilian society.

So the returns are in and, as we all know very well, it’s Rio de Janeiro that has been chosen by the International Olympic Committee to host the 2018 Summer Olympic Games. But competition to bring Olympic Games to one’s own city never really takes a rest. The 2010 Winter Games are due up soon (quick: Where will they be held? Do you even know?), which also means that the time is coming up to pick the city for another future Winter Olympics, namely the 2018 Games.

Brit Therkildsen of the Danish newspaper Politiken has a brief treatment about how that 2018 competition is shaping up. The short answer: underpopulated. The stimulus for her article in the first place is the fact that the deadline for applications for the 2018 Winter Games passed yesterday, and ultimately only three “cities” succeeded in putting themselves forward. I write “cities” because one of those is Pyeongchang, which is not really a city. “Sure it is!” you might be yelling, “It’s the capital of North Korea! What on earth are those leftist pinkos on the IOC thinking?” No, no – calm down! Pyeongchang is certainly Korean, but South Korean: it’s a “county” in northeast South Korea, not really that far from the “Demarcation Line” dividing the North from the South (they are still technically at war with each other – hmmm), but with “long, cold winters” and plenty of mountains, so presumably possessing what it takes (if you add massive money for construction to the mix) to stage the Winter Games. Plus, this is the third Winter Games in a row that Pyeongchang has officially applied to host. (more…)

In light of Chicago’s surprise last-place finish in the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) deliberations over which city would get to host the 2016 Summer Games, considering that the Committee met in Copenhagen it’s perhaps worthwhile to take a look at the Danish press to try to answer various questions. Like: What happened? How could Chicago have lost? (more…)

We all know that President Obama would be tickled pink to have his home city of Chicago win the nod to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. He has made his engagement to that cause plain – but, clearly, there are many other important matters on his plate right now. That’s why, at a promotional event yesterday on the White House lawn for “Chicago 2016,” he nonetheless made it clear that he would not be showing up personally at the meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Copenhagen next month that is supposed to decide whether the Windy City or one of its competitors (Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, or Madrid) gets that prize.

In a report from the Danish news agency Ritzau that appears in the leading daily Politiken (Copenhagen will manage without Obama) city spokespersons reacted calmly to the development. Said Morten Mølholm Hansen of the Danish Sporting Union (Idræts-Forbund) which will be the IOC’s host:

Of course we would have preferred to see Obama come to the city. But on the other hand I will say that the congress will attract such attention by itself that that is not decisive. So many big names will come to Copenhagen, and the the decision itself about who will become the host-city is so interesting for the entire world, that this will not disturb our concept.

This assessment is shared by communications consultant Henrik Byager, who points out that, after all, Barack Obama may not be coming but it seems that Michelle and Oprah Winfrey will – “the two most prominent women of all in the USA.” Besides, there is also that big United Nations climate change conference scheduled for Copenhagen for this December. Obviously it would not do to have the US president attend both, and if they had to choose one the Danes would prefer that he be at the latter, which actually has to do directly with Danish interests.

UPDATE: Ah, but it seems they’ll get Obama early anyway! Twice within three months, in fact, since he is certainly going to the December UN climate change conference as well. So much for “Obviously it would not do . . .”

FURTHER UPDATE: OK, who really knows whether Obama will actually show up again in Copenhagen in December?

The following post is meant as a public-service “heads-up” message to one Ms. B. Spears.

Britney darling: I know that China is high on your list of tour destinations – “exploding market,” “millions of rabid fans,” and all that. But it looks like you’ll just have to cross it off. The authorities there seemed determined to seriously cramp your style. I mean it: forget about it.

This we learn today from an article in Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel, entitled Peking wants to punish “playback-singing.” What is this are they talking about? Yep, you guessed it: lip-synching. That’s could be a strict no-go soon, punishable by Chinese law as “fraud towards the public” (Betrug an der Öffentlichkeit, although I suspect the Chinese use yet another phrase for official purposes). In fact, the Chinese Culture Ministry is considering making not only lip-synching but also instrument-synching (or whatever you call pretending to play your instrument against the pre-recorded sound of it playing the required tune) against the law. (more…)

Followers of this weblog over at least the past few months will recall my very doubtful stance towards the issue of possible doping by athletes at this years Beijing Olympic Games. I presented commentary from an ex-Olympic star doubting that doping could be avoided; and I pointed out how technological advances in sporting accessories were probably producing athletic performances many would call “unnatural” anyway. In fact, in my last sentence of that latter post I opined that, because of these accessories, we “have something else to be concerned about in addition to the pharmacological/blood-swapping tricks that we have to hope the Olympic authorities are sufficiently on-guard against.”

Sorry to say, but up comes an article in the respected German commentary weekly Die Zeit, by Friedhard Teuffel (Doping Policy of the IOC [= International Olympic Committee] is not credible), which indicates that those authorities were rather unlikely to have been sufficiently on-guard.
(more…)

“Georgia – again?” Well, yes. What else would there be? The Republican National Convention? Coming up (we think). Sarah Palin? Not today, but definitely stay tuned on that one, it could turn spectacular. Hurricane Gustav? The European viewpoint there is probably not too interesting, even if we might be somewhat honored by the choice of that quintessentially (Central) European given name for bestowal on the storm. My best sense of the EU’s official position on Gustav – gathered from that extensive trawling through the various national presses that I do for you on a continual basis – is that it’s taken to be a bad thing, definitely.

Actually, developments on the Georgia story do keep on coming, especially if you take the unpleasantness there of last month (not at all unreasonably) as a proxy for the new Eurasian balance-of-power that conflict suddenly revealed to the world. Today is when the EU heads of government are due in Paris to meet on a European response (if any) to Russia’s recent behavior. Looking ahead last Friday, the Berlin correspondent for Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, Bartosz T. Wielinski, put forth a mostly pessimistic outlook on what could be accomplished (What the Union can do to Russia on Monday). (more…)

With his commentary piece in the Financial Times Deutschland (Sterile Games in Peking) Claus Hecking wraps up all the repeated instances of fakery that have been brought to light already at this year’s Beijing Olympics – and they are only about half over! – into a thought-provoking synthesis: together, he maintains, they add up to a profound and very revealing cultural misunderstanding.

If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know what “fakery” I’m talking about here – (more…)

Die Zeit has engaged a number of German ex-Olympians as commentators on the current Beijing Games, among which Heike Henkel, the German (female) high-jumper who won the gold medal in that event in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics (among other athletic honors). In an interview posted on that newspaper’s website (Heike Henkel Puts Phelps’ World Records in Doubt) she admittedly has no unkind words specifically about the validity of achievements in this year’s women’s high-jump – but probably only because that competition is scheduled to start next Thursday! In the meantime, she has plenty to say on the subject of doping and its effect on athletics and athletes. (more…)

How about that Michael Phelps, hey? And the rest of his teammates on the American swim-team, too: not only is gold raining down on them, but an incredible number of swimming world-records are being broken at these Beijing Olympics as well. It’s phenomenal! The Olympic Games have not seen anything like this since . . . well, perhaps since the Winter Games of 1998 in Nagano, Japan, which occurred in the period when clap skates were coming into widespread use for the first time, and as a result “long track” speed-skating records were broken wholesale. (more…)

It was something to make you wonder aloud: “Are they serious?” As part of the good face towards the outside world that China was trying to build in the run-up to the Beijing Games – an attempt to live up to supposed “Olympic ideals,” since similar measures had apparently been introduced at the Athens and Sydney Olympics – back last month the Chinese authorities announced that protests and demonstrations would be legally allowed, but only within zones that would be designated within three of Beijing’s parks, namely the Zizhuyuan, Ritan, and World Parks, respectively in the city’s NW, E, and SW parts. All that was necessary was to apply for permission five days in advance, specifying in your application, in detail, the planned nature of the protest, the topic, and the number of participants.

(If you’d like a bit of English-language amusement, you can check out the on-line article about this from Xinhua, one of China’s two official news agencies. The respective park managers are diligently boning up on the national “law on assemblies, procession and demonstrations” to get prepared; meanwhile, park visitors express alarm that their lives could be disturbed.)

No, of course they were not serious. (more…)

First of all, here’s confirmation of the point James Fallows made on his Atlantic Monthly weblog, namely that Chinese Olympic officials pre-recorded the spectacular chain-of-exploding-fireworks display that allegedly happened during the Olympics’ opening ceremony last Friday. From the Czech newspaper Lidové noviny we have an account (A Small Chinese Deception) of how it’s even true that some of those sensational explosion effects did not even actually happen, but were merely animation effects of the sort you would expect out of an animated movie from DreamWorks. That much Wang Wei, vice-chairman of the Beijing Olympic Committee admitted today to reporters. Incidentally, the caption to the one picture accompanying the article at the top, showing the Olympic flame, speculates “Perhaps the lighting of the Olympic flame was also only from a recording.” (more…)

The Dutch daily Het Parool has word of the current military struggle between Russia and Georgia spreading beyond land conflict (Russian Fleet Sinks Georgian Boat). Quoting Russian press bureaus, who in turn gained their information from the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, the paper reports that yesterday (Sunday) two Georgian patrol boats in the Black Sea fired rockets at Russian warships, who returned fire and sunk one of the boats. Spokesmen for the Georgian government were not available for comment. (more…)

OK, let’s talk about the Olympics, then. But not the 2008 Beijing Olympics – rather, the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics! Yes, we pride ourselves here at EuroSavant on our solipsism, but the immediate motive for this nostalgic look 80 years backward is the excellent recent article in the Dutch newspaper Trouw by Haro Hielkema, Amsterdam: Example for the Rest, which is itself largely derived from the book Model voor de toekomst – Amsterdam, Olympische Spelen 1928 by Ruud Paauw and Jaap Visser (which was itself only published a few weeks ago, that is, just before the opening of the Beijing Games – which I bet will not surprise you at all). (more…)

The Dutch newspaper Nederlands Dagblad is somewhat of an outlier in the European media sphere, as it is expressly a Christian newspaper. You can see right there in its logo, written at the top: Christelijk betrokken, or “Engaged in a Christian manner” (“Christianly engaged,” if you like). Surf to the paper’s website on Sunday and you’ll find nothing: that’s the Lord’s day of rest, after all.

It’s not alone, though: the Reformatorisch Dagblad, or “Reformed Daily,” is similar, although that website does stay open on Sundays. People should not confuse the allegedly “anything goes” atmosphere of cosmopolitan cities like Amsterdam (see this weblog’s recent coverage of the famous yearly Gay Pride parade there, for example) with Dutch culture as a whole, which in fact features some enclaves which can easily hold their own in the Christian piety department with any of the American Amish communities.

The Nederlands Dagblad reports today, as the 2008 Olympic Games open in Beijing, that the Chinese church leader Zhang Mingxuan was recently arrested by the authorities in his hometown in the province of Henan, along with his wife and another associate, and brought to an office of the “security services” in that province’s capital, Zhengzhou. This follows Zhang’s being driven out of his Beijing by the authorities at the beginning of last month, and then out of the city itself two weeks ago.

The Stichting De Ondergrondse Kerk (a Dutch name, of course: “Foundation of the Underground Church”) has issued a call to make these opening days of the Olympic Games days of prayer on behalf of the persecuted Christians in China.