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Tag: 2014 sochi winter olympics
Keep Grief Symbols Out Of Games, Athletes Told

Keep Grief Symbols Out Of Games, Athletes Told

Sochi (Russia) (AFP) – The International Olympic Committee on Monday warned against wearing black armbands and other symbols of mourning during competitions at the Sochi 2014 Games, in a controversy that has raised strong emotions among athletes.

The question of whether the IOC’s charter allows athletes to make public displays of grief has turned into a major issue in Sochi after Norwegian ski stars wore black bands to remember the late brother of a team mate.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesman Mark Adams said the IOC understood the motivations behind the athletes’ gestures and was prepared to help organise any commemorative events.

But he said that the IOC objected to athletes using black armbands or any other symbols that went beyond their standard national kit during races and other competitions.

“It is not about the rule, it is a question of what is appropriate,” he told reporters.

Freestyle skiers and snowboarders have reportedly been banned from wearing tributes on their kit to Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke, who died after a halfpipe training accident in the United States 2012.

“We would say that the competitions themselves are not the right place to do this,” Adams said, commenting on the Burke controversy.

“But we want to help hold any kind of remembrance,” he added.

Canada’s Burke had been seen as a top medal contender for Sochi and her death sent shockwaves through the tightly knit freestyle skiing community.

Australian snowboarder Torah Bright, who wanted to wear stickers commemorating Burke but was told not to do so by the IOC, lashed out at the ban in a statement on her Instagram account.

“I ride with a Sarah sticker on my snowboard and helmet always. The IOC however, consider Sarah stickers ‘a political statement’ and have banned them. WOW,” Bright said.

Norway’s female cross-country skiing team, including skiathlon Sochi Olympic champion Marit Bjoergen, wore black armbands in tribute to the brother of teammate Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen, who died on the eve of the Games.

Norwegian media have said the IOC sent a letter to the Norwegian Olympic Committee reminding it that the cross-country skiers should not have worn black armbands.

But Adams said the IOC had contacted the Norwegian committee but insisted the issue was now closed.

“I know we sent a letter to the Norwegian Olympic Committee but that is the end of the matter,” he said.

Gold medal-winning Bjoergen, Norwegian bronze medallist Heidi Weng and their teammates had after the skiathlon on Saturday been shown hugging each other and weeping uncontrollably in a show of emotion.

The nordic superstar Bjoergen, a household name in her own country, was quoted as saying Monday that she was “sad” that the IOC had complained but the Norwegians had been prepared for this.

Jacobsen, whose brother died suddenly on Friday, is still expected to compete in the sprint event on Tuesday.

In ice hockey, the Swedish women’s team goaltender Valentina Wallner has had to cover up part of her mask which was tribute to the late men’s national team netminder Stefan Liv.

Liv, 30, who won a gold medal with Sweden at the 2006 Turin Games, died in Russia in 2011 when the plane carrying him and his Lokomotiv Yaroslavl teammates to their first game of the season crashed during take-off.

The IOC appears to be strictly interpreting a sub-section to rule 50 of the Olympic Charter which states that “no form of publicity or propaganda, commercial or otherwise” may appear on athletes or their sportswear.

AFP Photo/Doug Pensinger

U.S.-Russia Tensions Flare Over Winter Olympics Security

U.S.-Russia Tensions Flare Over Winter Olympics Security

Washington (AFP) – The Sochi Winter Olympics have opened up a new front of distrust between the United States and Russia, with tensions simmering over security preparations amid fears the games could be targeted by extremist militants.

Analysts say the former Cold War rivals are unlikely to risk a full-blown confrontation over security in Sochi, the first Olympics held on Russian soil since the U.S.-boycotted 1980 Moscow Games.

Nevertheless, some experts say the failure of the United States and Russia to engage fully over a range of issues could ultimately compromise security at the Olympics.

Micah Zenko, an expert on national security at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, argued that the “safety and security of everyone attending the Winter Olympics is being put at further unnecessary risk because of the reciprocal distrust between Russia and U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence agencies.”

The White House has expressed “concern” about an uptick in reported threats by violent extremists relating to the Sochi Games.

Security fears have been exacerbated by two suicide bombings in the southern city of Volgograd last month — Russia’s deadliest in three years — that killed 34 people.

Other senior U.S. officials meanwhile have complained that Russia has “not been forthcoming in sharing specific threat information.”

The U.S. Olympic Committee has advised athletes heading to Sochi to avoid wearing their team uniforms or Team USA logos outside of Olympic venues during the February 7 to 23 multi-sport event to avoid being targeted.

According to Temuri Yakobashvili, the former deputy prime minister of Georgia and ex-ambassador to the United States, the American concerns are “are very legitimate.”

“The U.S. government obviously should be very cautious and should be very concerned because of the anti-American sentiment,” said Yakobashvili, an expert with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a public policy think tank.

In a video released earlier this month, militants from the Caucasus region threatened to mount attacks on the Olympics, vowing to deliver a “present” to President Vladimir Putin as well as overseas tourists visiting the games.

“We have been talking to the Russians about the regional security concerns we have. These are longstanding concerns about the North Caucasus,” a senior official in President Barack Obama’s administration told journalists Friday.

The official acknowledged the administration’s “frustration” over a level of intelligence sharing by Russia deemed to be insufficient.

“This is a tough issue because it’s an issue of intelligence,” the official said. “We have good relations, we have good conversations, but we always want to know more. “So what you’re hearing is frustration that we don’t know everything.”

Russia countered the criticism through Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, insisting the cooperation was satisfactory.

“It’s good enough,” Sergei Kislyak told CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “And you need to remember, it’s Olympic Games that are being held in Russia. And we have pretty solid capabilities to deal with it on our own.

“I don’t see any tension. I didn’t feel any tension,” he added, predicting a “secure, peaceful and successful” Olympics.

Nevertheless, Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations said the US and Russia remain locked in a stand-off of mutual distrust.

“Russia does not want to provide information that could reveal the sources and methods of how it collects human and signals intelligence, while the United States will not share jamming technology that could defeat radio-signal car bombs, because Russia could share or use that information to develop countermeasures that overcome those jammers,” Zenko said.

Republican lawmaker Peter King said the United States was wary of sharing technology with Russia.

“I can understand why people in our government would be reluctant to share a very sophisticated piece of technology, which could be used against us in the future,” he told ABC television’s “This Week.”

Yakobashvili said he did not expect the U.S. and Russia to “clash” over the issue of security.

“I don’t think that the United States is trying by any means to confront the Russian federation and its leadership,” he said.

In fact, Washington has repeatedly offered security assistance to Moscow.

Obama and Putin engaged in telephone diplomacy last week, while the Pentagon has said it is ready to deploy air and naval assets, including moving two warships into the Black Sea. Russia has rejected the offers.

AFP Photo/Danil Semyonov

Putin Says Security Is Set For Olympics

Putin Says Security Is Set For Olympics

Los Angeles Times

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Russia will “do our best” to prevent terrorist attacks at the Sochi Winter Olympics, which are being held in the shadow of an Islamist insurgency in the Caucasus region.

“We have a perfect understanding of the scope of the threat and how to deal with it and how to prevent it,” Putin said in an interview broadcast Sunday. “I hope that our law enforcement agencies will deal with it with honor and dignity, the way it was during other major sports and political events.”

The interview was recorded Friday in Sochi with a number of Russian and foreign television networks, including ABC.
About 40,000 police and special forces officers will enforce security at the games under the command of a round-the-clock headquarters, Putin said.

“Our task as organizers is to ensure the security of athletes and guests at this major sports event, and we will do our best,” the president said. “We will protect our air and sea space as well as the mountain cluster.”

Putin said the concentration of measures in and around Sochi will not undermine security in other parts of Russia.
Security concerns have grown ahead of the Winter Games after three terrorist attacks were carried out by suicide bombers, one in October and two at the end of December, in the Russian industrial center of Volgograd, about 400 miles north of Sochi.

They were followed by a number of lower-scale attacks and bombings in the southern region of Stavropol and in Dagestan, a volatile republic in the North Caucasus region.

A radical Islamist group issued a videotape Sunday claiming responsibility for the two December bombings in Volgograd. The video included footage from before the attack that showed two men who were purported to be the suicide bombers. The video demanded that Russia “immediately withdraw from the lands of the Caucasus.”

North Caucasus Islamist resistance leader Doku Umarov declared in a video statement distributed on the Internet
last June that his fighters would use “maximum force” to keep the Sochi Olympic Games from being “held on the bones of our ancestors.”

Last week, the head of Chechnya and Putin’s staunchest Caucasus loyalist, Ramzan Kadyrov, said that Umarov had been killed. Kadyrov said he based his assertion on intercepted phone conversations among rebel leaders, but the information has not been confirmed by Russian authorities.

In his interview, Putin also rejected allegations of widespread corruption during the construction of venues and infrastructure at Sochi, where the Games are set to open Feb. 7.

“What instances of corruption?” he said. “I do not see serious corruption.” Rather, he said, he saw a problem with exaggerated figures for the cost of the Games.

Putin put the final figure for construction costs associated with the Olympics at $6.5 billion, a far cry from the $50 billion estimated by Kremlin critics and some Russian officials.

Putin acknowledged that his sum might be on the low side. “If we take into account the expenses associated with the development of relevant infrastructure, the sum may be larger, but those expenses are not directly related to the Olympic Games,” the president said.

One of Putin’s most outspoken critics, former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, has called the Sochi Games “the scam of the century.”

“I have every reason and lots of facts at my disposal to believe that corrupt officials and businessmen close to Putin pocketed from $25 billion to $30 billion in the course of the construction,” Nemtsov said in a recent interview with The Times.

Putin denounced these allegations, saying they were spread by forces intent on undermining the Russian Olympic effort.

“There are always some forces that are always against everything, even against the Olympic project,” Putin said. “I don’t know why, but probably it is their job, probably it is the way they feel, maybe somebody must have offended them in their life.”

AFP Photo/Maxim Shipenkov

Downhill Queen Vonn To Miss Sochi Winter Olympics

Paris (AFP) – American ski champion Lindsey Vonn is to miss next month’s Sochi Winter Olympics due to a right knee injury she sustained nearly a year ago, she announced on Tuesday.

“I am devastated to announce that I will not be competing in Sochi,” Vonn said on her Facebook page. ”I did everything I possibly could to somehow get strong enough to overcome having no ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) but the reality has sunk in that my knee is just too unstable to compete at this level. I’m having surgery soon so that I can be ready for the World Championships at home in Vail next February.”

“On a positive note, this means there will be an additional spot so that one of my teammates can go for gold,” she continued.

The 29-year-old Vonn, who has 59 World Cup race victories to her credit and who is the reigning Olympic downhill champion, badly injured the knee while competing in a super-G at the World Championships in February.

After reconstructive surgery on the joint and a lengthy layoff, Vonn returned to World Cup competition at Lake Louise, Canada in early December, but only after she injured the same knee again while training in Colorado in November.

At Lake Louise, Vonn was 40th in the first downhill, 11th in a second downhill and fifth in a super-G.

She then competed in a downhill at Val d’Isere in the French Alps just before Christmas, under the watchful eye of boyfriend Tiger Woods, but failed to finish the race as she skied out.

“Unfortunately I have no ACL and it just gave out on me,” she said at the time.

Vonn said she would compete in just one or two races before the Winter Olympics in the Russian ski resort of Sochi from February 7.

Her absence will deprive the Games of one of the biggest stars and draws in winter sport with her romance with Woods making headlines worldwide.

The head of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, Bill Marolt said that he was confident Vonn would be able to bounce back from the injury in time for the next World Cup season later this year.

“She knows the hard work it takes to get to the top and still has significant goals to achieve in what has been an incredible career. While Lindsey won’t be in Sochi, we have a strong team that is well prepared to challenge,” he said. ”The women’s speed team is experienced with five athletes who have achieved World Cup podiums and a seasoned veteran in Julia Mancuso who has won three Olympic medals in her career.”

In a high-risk sport that leaves little margin between triumph and tragedy, Vonn has endured several injury nightmares in what has been a spectacular career.

She bounced back from a frightful crash in downhill training at the 2006 Olympics that left her with a badly bruised back, competing just days later.

A year later, a badly twisted right knee in slalom training at the Are world championships saw her season brought to a premature end.

Vonn also broke a finger in a crash at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, an event she went into carrying a shin injury.

Each time the American battled back, picking up multiple medals and four overall World Cup titles along the way.

It remains to be seen if, at 29, she will be able to pick up the pieces and once again be competitive at the highest level.