Left field

from Photographers Blog:

At home with Hercules

By Peter Andrews

When asked which Polish athlete has a chance at the London Olympics I immediately thought of the shot put champion Tomasz Majewski.

For those who have never seen Tomasz in real life, it can be a bit intimidating. I have always considered myself tall at 192cm (6 feet, 3 inches), but when I first met Tomasz I suddenly felt very small. With a height of 2.4 meters (7 feet 10 inches) and weighing 140 kg (308 pounds), Tomasz is overpowering. He reminded me of Hercules with his long dark hair up in a pony tail. He also has a nice warm smile he puts on easily, so being around him is relaxed and easy right from the first handshake.

I wanted to photograph Tomasz training for the Olympics and he was kind enough to let me just be around him during his daily training and routines. So for the next few weeks I was watching him shot putting, running, jumping, lifting weights and preparing for the biggest sporting event, held every four years. With just one arm he lifted more than I could bench press with all my strength.

I also accompanied him during family moments with his wife Anna and their newly born son Mikolaj. One of the most touching moments was photographing Tomasz holding, with so much care in his huge hands, tiny Mikolaj. The bare torso Hercules was morphing into a gentle giant in front of my eyes.

from Newsmaker:

Thomson Reuters Newsmaker with Sebastian Coe and Hugh Robertson

To mark the one year countdown to the London Olympics, Thomson Reuters held a Newsmaker event on July 21 with four-time Olympic medalist and chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, Sebastian Coe and Minister for Sport and the Olympics, Hugh Robertson MP. Below are highlights from the evening.

Legacy of 2012 includes economic dividend: Robertson

Transport system ready for 2012 demands: Coe

Olympic ticket sell-out is coup for London: Coe

from Newsmaker:

Tick, tick, tickets – defusing an Olympic PR bomb

-Adrian Warner is BBC London's Olympics Correspondent. The opinions expressed are his own.-

The morning after his surprise 800 metres defeat by Steve Ovett at the 1980 Moscow Olympics,  Seb Coe was sitting in his bed in the Olympic village when former decathlete and close friend Daley Thompson stormed into the room. Thompson went straight to the curtains and opened them up.

"What's the weather like?" Coe asked.

"Oh, it all looks a bit silver to me," Thompson replied.

Coe smiled but the comment hurt a bit. He had been favourite to beat his British rival in the 800 and was waking up to the disappointment of having missed out on an Olympic title. But Thompson's comment helped him to bounce back and produce one of the most memorable comebacks in Olympic history when he won the 1,500 a few days later.

Today Coe is facing the most challenging days he has faced as chairman of London 2012's organising committee. He is going to need some of that determination again with just over a year to go to the opening ceremony.

The way the tickets have been sold has not gone down well with the British public. With only one in 12 households in London estimated to have received tickets for the Games, Coe knows he has to get more people into the venues to keep the Olympic buzz in the capital. More than 1.2 million of the 1.9 million applicants missed out in the first round when the most attractive tickets went on sale. One survey by London's Evening Standard recently suggested more than half of the public thought the system was unfair.

from Newsmaker:

Send your questions for Seb Coe and Hugh Robertson

To mark the one year countdown to the London Olympics, Thomson Reuters will hold a Newsmaker on July 21 at 18:30 BST with four-time Olympic medalist and chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, Sebastian Coe and Minister for Sport and the Olympics, Hugh Robertson MP.

The event will begin with a speech by Coe, who won gold in the 1500m at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, followed by a Q&A session with both guests, moderated by me, Global Sports Editor Paul Radford. The Newsmaker will be streamed live to the Reuters website and we'll provide rolling coverage of the event as it happens.

As well as questions from the audience, you also have the chance to put your questions to Coe and Robertson. Please join us on the day and leave your comments and questions below. You can also post your questions on the Reuters UK Facebook page or send them over Twitter using the hashtag #newsmkr or via @ReutersSports

Image -- The Chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), Sebastian Coe, poses with a prototype of the London 2012 Olympic Torch at St Pancras station in London June 8, 2011. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

Does athletics still rule the Olympics?

Dash or splash? Which is the number one Olympic sport?

Athletics has massive crowds and Usain “Lightning” Bolt torching world records while swimming boasts Michael Phelps ripping off another bundle of world and Olympic records.

Conversations over the past week indicate the argument is heating up.

First, respected U.S. sports analyst Bob Dorfman suggested: “Because of the drug issues, because it (athletics) is not terribly compelling, I think swimming has taken over a little bit in terms of Olympic sports popularity.”

Athletics leaders including USA Track & Field chief executive Doug Logan strongly disagreed. But the splash-dash talk continued with International Swimming Federation (FINA) boss Julio Maglione at the forefront.

During a meeting of sports chiefs in Dubai to discuss the way broadcast revenue from the Olympic Games is distributed, Maglione called for a realignment that would take money from athletics and provide more for sports like his.

Vlog – When World Championships get forgotten

I’m covering the world figure skating championships in Turin where there is a real feeling of anti-climax given they come just a month after the Winter Olympics. Several champions have withdrawn.

As discussed in the video above, should world championships in certain sports skip a year when the Olympics take place?

from Shop Talk:

Olympic Gold for Coke, McDonald’s and Visa

When is Olympic sponsorship money well spent? A Performance Research poll shows it may depend on how the funds are used.

Coke, McDonald's and Visa dominate consumer awareness when it comes to the Olympics, according to a study by the Rhode Island-based research firm that evaluates the sponsorship industry.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans polled confirmed the Olympic sponsorship of Coke and McDonald's, followed closely by 66 percent for Visa, Performance Research said. Those three companies also were listed as having consumers' favorite Olympic TV commercials and doing the most to support the Games.

"They start their advertising early and they're continuous with it," Performance Research President Jed Pearsall said of the three companies' success. "They're always reminding people they're Olympic sponsors."

Other sponsors trailed far behind in consumer awareness -- AT&T (36 percent), Procter & Gamble (27 percent), Polo Ralph Lauren (26 percent), GE (25 percent), Samsung (24 percent) and Panasonic (20 percent), according to the study.

Meanwhile, ambush marketing is alive and well at the Games despite the efforts of the International and U.S. Olympic committees as restaurant chain Subway was associated with the Olympics by 26 percent of respondents, Performance Research said.

Nearly half of respondents saw Subway's ad with swimmer Michael Phelps, who won eight gold medals at the Beijing Summer Games in 2008, and 79 percent of those believed Subway supported the U.S. Olympic team.

from Olympics Notebook: Vancouver 2010:

Lay down the run! And update your Olympic lingo

In the skiing and snowboarding events at the Olympic Games these days, we have many a super athlete giving us mere mortals lessons in linguistics.  It's actually sick, in modern terms that is.

Sick ("crazy, cool, insane") was snowboarder Shaun White's killer second run through the half-pipe, a near perfect, thriller of a ride, even after he had already clinched the gold medal. Dude's on fire.

Lindsey Vonn showed us how to "lay down a run" with her daring downhill burst that brought her a gold medal.  It appears that "throw it down" and "put it down" can also be used when talking about runs and races.

And then there are the broadcast commentators of a certain age who can be heard talking on their nice mainstream media about "ripping" snow conditions and "stoked" snowboarders. Granted these words are not new to the modern lexicon, but they may be to these people.

 Finally, there is a quaint little Canadian phrase that just might be catching on to a wider world, because it is just  too ambiguously funny to keep confined to Canada. That is "hurry hard" -- the words Canadian curlers use to get their teammates to sweep harder.  They have even inspired a new brand of condoms.

Heard any more at these Games? Let us know in the comments.

PHOTO: Silver medallist Hannah Teter of the United States waits for her score after her second run in the finals of the women's snowboarding halfpipe on Cypress Mountain at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, February 18, 2010. REUTERS/Todd Korol

Where flags of convenience figure large

At the European figure skating championships this week I kept wondering how it was possible that whichever skater was on the ice, there always seemed to be lots of fans waving just the right flag.

And then I spotted the lady who had been jiggling her Union Jack quickly folding it up and taking out her German flag and wafting that around with just as much enthusiasm.

Then I noticed the blue, white and red pompoms — very handy to shake in support of Dutch, Russian, French or British skaters.

Can you imagine wearing a Tottenham Hotspur shirt and taking it off to reveal an Arsenal shirt? And then putting it back on when Spurs score? It doesn’t even bear thinking about.

So it seems that figure skating is more about the skaters than the countries they represent.

And you can see why — so many have competed for other countries before the one they have adopted. It’s just as well supporters have a supply of different flags to keep up with them.

from MacroScope:

Asking a banker about the Olympics

Henrique Meirelles, Brazil's highly rated central bank president, gave unusual insight into current thinking at the International Olympic Committee in a speech in Oxford the other night.

Diverging from his main theme on Brazil's remarkable journey from economic basket case to emerging market superpower, Meirelles said that he had gone to Copenhagen last month as part of Rio de Janeiro's successful bid for the 2016 Olympics. The reason: The IOC asked him to come.

Meirelles said that the IOC knew that Brazil currently had all the conditions needed to host the Games, but wanted to know about how predictable it was that this would carry through over the next seven years. "They wanted to know what is really happening," he said.

Essentially, the IOC wanted to check with the top economic manager that the country's finances will still be shining when the Games are held.

 Perhaps they were thinking of London 2012.