Vancouver student, 18, chosen as first Olympic torchbearer

Vancouver student, 18, chosen as first Olympic torchbearer

JAMES CHRISTIE
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
January 20, 2009 at 5:43 AM EST
Patricia Moreno beat one set of odds in being the first runner named as a torchbearer in the lead-up to the Vancouver Olympics. The next will be to show her friends they're wrong when they tease her about falling down with the torch when the 18-year-old Vancouver high-school student takes centre stage with the Olympic flame as it makes its way toward the 2010 Games.
"I don't know how intense it's going to be that day," Ms. Moreno said as she was introduced at a news conference in Toronto. "When the Coke team showed up at the recreation centre where I volunteer around Christmas, I was shaking."

Ms. Moreno was one of thousands of teens who applied online for a torchbearer job at the SoGo Active site, which the beverage maker maintains in partnership with the health-and-wellness organization ParticipAction. She was picked as the first runner to be introduced "because she embodied the infectious attitude of a young person who wanted to be active and make a difference in her community," said David Moran, director of public affairs and communications for Coca-Cola Ltd.

If Ms. Moreno overcame some odds to be selected from the thousands of applicants, so did the beverage maker. Coca-Cola has long been a sponsor of the International Olympic Committee and a sponsor of torch relays dating back to the Atlanta Olympics of 1996. But its pop image has been uncomplimentary, and its sugared marquee product has often been associated with poor diets and youth obesity.

The company is out to correct that image with this venture, Mr. Moran said. It has positioned itself as a champion of active living and got several health, wellness and environmental groups to sit on its panel to select torchbearers, including the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, ParticipAction, WWF-Canada and the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Games, known as VANOC.
"It's a collaboration," said Kellie Leitch, adviser to Health Canada on healthy children and youth. Dr. Leitch also is a member of the selection panel for the torchbearers. "Obesity among youth has tripled in the last generation," she said. "This is the first generation of kids who won't outlive their parents. But here's an industry partner who is willing to lead the charge toward active living."

Mr. Moran acknowledged that Coke and health advocates are unusual bedfellows, but pointed out that this can be an advantage.

"We can reach a large audience and we can make a difference," he said. In fact, the sugar-sweetened product that gives the company its name is only one of about 80 products marketed to Canadians as the company "reinvents" itself as a "total hydration" operation. Coke also sells bottled water, energy drinks, coffee and juices.

About 1,000 youths will be selected from the SoGo Active teens. Another 1,100 will be picked by the selection panel from essay writers who enter at iCoke.ca, and describe how Canadians can improve their communities through a "Live Active, Live Green" approach. Other torchbearers will be designated by another presenting sponsor, RBC, Games organizer VANOC and other sponsors and suppliers.

Ms. Moreno will be one of 12,000 torchbearers taking part in the longest domestic journey yet for the Olympic flame, spanning some 45,000 kilometres over 106 days, starting on Oct. 30 in Victoria.

The route stretches to Canada's three coasts, from Vancouver Island to Cape Breton to Ellesmere Island in the north. The Olympic flame will reach Alert, Nunavut, the farthest north it will have yet journeyed. The route is designed to bring the flame within an hour's drive of 90 per cent of Canadians. The torch, which is being designed by Bombardier, is to be unveiled in Montreal next month. source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090120.wtorch20/BNStory/National/home

Brace up for glamorous women boxers in the ring

NEW DELHI: In a bid to get women’s boxing included in the 2012 London Olympics, the game’s governing body (AIBA) has decided to ‘sex up’ the sport. Taking a leaf out of beach-volleyball, which moved from T-shirts and long shorts to strictly-bikinis dress-code to beef up TRP ratings, the AIBA has commissioned some leading designers of the world with the job of creating a new dress code for the women boxers.

The AIBA is of the opinion that if it wants to make its ‘‘case stronger’’ in front of International Olympic Committee (IOC) in the upcoming meetings in June and October this year, it will have to present women’s boxing as a ‘‘popular sport".

And to popularise the sport, AIBA has realised it will have to make it ‘‘more attractive and viewer-friendly and not let the female boxers appear more like men in the ring" in order to achieve its end.

India’s MC MaryKom, the four-time women’s World boxing champion, laid out the pros and cons of the change in attire when the news was broken to her about AIBA’s intention. ‘‘I agree with the fact that our attire at the moment is boring and manly. And it irritates quite a few boxers because of it," the boxer told TOI from Imphal.

‘‘But the designers should keep in mind some of the conservative countries like India. Many boxers come from Mizoram and although they are quite cool with wearing trendy clothes in their normal lives, I’m sure they won’t be that comfortable when it comes to wearing ‘sexy dress’ in a sporting arena. I hope the AIBA will keep this in mind when it approves the design."

It might be recalled that Indian beach volleyball players refused to wear bikinis in the World Beach Volleyball tournament in Chennai last year because they thought it was ‘objectionable’. The players claimed that the skimpy outfits - mandatory dress - were against their tradition. As a result, the rules were relaxed for the Indian team and they were allowed to compete in T-shirts and long shorts.

‘‘AIBA’s argument on changing the dress-code in the recently-concluded meeting of Asian Boxing Confederation (ASBC) in China was that the women and men boxers look alike in the ring at the moment with their baggy-attires. Therefore the change of dress-code is essential," said PK Muralidharan Raja, secretary of the Indian Boxing Federation, who was present at the meeting.

‘‘It will help in grabbing more eyeballs which will in turn make the IOC look into the matter of including women’s boxing in Olympics with more seriousness. The fact is out of all the disciplines in the Olympics apart from boxing, every sport has women participating. The question is: Why should women’s boxing be left behind? In fact, in 1904 at St. Luis Games, women’s boxing was a demonstration event," Raja said.

The IOC has already looked into this matter and has proposed an initial plan of accepting 44 women boxers if the number of male boxers is correspondingly reduced from the present allotment of 286 at the Games. But it has not been finalised yet. The AIBA in the meantime is doing all it can to sell the dress code idea.

Source: http://sports.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Brace_up_for_glamorous_women_boxers/articleshow/3986175.cms

Vancouver might be on hook for Olympic Village

It's built on Vancouver's valuable waterfront real estate. How could taxpayers ever get soaked building a glittering, billion-dollar athletes' village for the Olympics?
Easier than you might think.

Thinking it couldn't lose in the real-estate big leagues, a few years ago the City of Vancouver guaranteed the world it could build the Olympic Village for 2010 - and even make a profit. Now the global financial crisis has turned a supposedly sure thing into a high-stakes gamble.


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The Olympic Village under construction in Vancouver.
REUTERS

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Font:****The dilemma is that the local condo market has turned. The Olympic condo units, which were supposed to be occupied by athletes during the Games and then turned over to new owners, are probably worth 10-to-20-per-cent less than they were expected to be.

Even worse, the prospect of fast sales - most were expected to sell by 2010 - has evaporated. If they don't want to sell at fire-sale prices, city officials now realize sales will probably need to be delayed until the market rebounds, whenever that might be.

Holding off on selling in a falling market is, of course, what any savvy real-estate holder would do. But there's a problem: The Olympic Village is built on a mountain of borrowed money.

Putting off sales will certainly mean extending hundreds of millions of dollars in construction loans well beyond 2010. And that comes at a high price.

Vancouver city officials, and its new administration, continue to keep the details of the Olympic Village finances under a cone of secrecy. But here's what they are looking at:

The biggest loan to construct the Olympic Village is $750 million from Fortress Investment, a Wall St. financial firm. Another, emergency loan of up to $100 million was recently approved by the city. Then there's another $160 million still owed to the city of Vancouver for the sale of the waterfront land where the Olympic Village sits.

Now the assets: There are about 750 Olympic condo units that will go on the market. So far, about 250 of the lower-price condos have been sold at an average price of about $800,000, or $200 million.

Now do the math.

Let's assume building the Olympic Village entails the developer drawing down the full amount of the loans. That means $850 million left to pay. Another $160 million must also be paid back to the City of Vancouver, for its land. Total project liabilities: about $1 billion.

Now, let's optimistically assume all those 250 condos already purchased (mostly on deposit) complete their deals. At an average of $800,000 apiece, that would generate $200 million. That brings total liabilities down to about $800 million.

A year ago, paying that off didn't seem problematic. The remaining 500 units - with prices as high as $6 million - would surely earn enough to put the project solidly in the black after 2010.

Now, with nobody lining up for condos, quick repayment is unlikely. So that means extending the terms of the loans, possibly by years. What's that going to cost?

It's hard to say without seeing the books. But a conservative bet is that in the tight credit market, interest would be about six per cent a year on $800 million in liabilities. (That includes the $160-million the city is still owed, which would likely earn six per cent, too, if it were in hand and shrewdly invested. )

That means carrying costs of that $800 million are about $48 million a year. Add in management costs and deferred property taxes, because most of the Olympic Village is empty, and it's a cost of about $1 million a week to hold onto those Olympic condos.

We can continue to hope that Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his administration will find a creative way out of this scary scenario. The market might improve. More units might be sold.

But if things go sour, taxpayers will be on the hook. Vancouver city hall has guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars of those Olympic Village loans

Source: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/features/viewpoints/story.html?id=56bf72b8-671e-42ef-90a6-307474cdd4f5&p=2