Olympic Newsdesk - IOC Picks Lake Placid for Career Forum; Mixed Relays Make Splash

IOC Picks Lake Placid for Career Forum

Lake Placid will host next month’s IOC Athlete Career Program Forum, the sixth to date but first staged outside Lausanne.

"We are pleased to be returning to Lake Placid, a village steeped in Olympic tradition, for the next IOC ACP Forum," said IOC President Jacques Rogge. "These meetings are an integral part of the IOC Athlete Career Program, and through the varied discussions and workshops they help to benefit athletes around the world. We look forward to building on the momentum from the past forums and expect a productive and informative gathering in November."

The event will be organized by the U.S. Olympic Committee in cooperation with human resource specialists Adecco and Lake Placid 1980 legacy body the New York State Olympic Regional Development Authority.

Scheduled for Nov. 8 to 11, it’s expected to draw around 100 delegates, including Adecco ACP country managers and their counterparts from more than 35 National Olympic Committees as well as members of the IOC Athletes' Commission.

"We are honored to host this important event on U.S. soil for the first time, demonstrating not only our commitment to the Olympic Movement, but to the future of athletes from all over the world," said USOC CEO Scott Blackmun.

"New York State is pleased and excited to join together with the USOC to host," added Governor Andrew Cuomo. "The facilities in Lake Placid are well known to Olympic athletes and enthusiasts worldwide, and have served as home for two Winter Games in the past 100 years."

The forum will run alongside a bobsleigh and skeleton World Cup scheduled for Nov. 5 to 10 at the Olympic Sports Complex.

Mixed Relays Make Splash

Swimming is the latest sport to introduce mixed relays at an elite level.

Following their debuts at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore, mixed 4x50m medley and 4x50m freestyle races feature this week in Dubai for the first time at a FINA World Cup.

Racing the anchor leg, women’s 50m free world record-holder Britta Steffen held off Hungary's Krisztian Takacs and Ukraine's Sergii Frolov – both men – to win the medley for Germany late Tuesday.

Unlike the biathlon and luge mixed relays debuting at Sochi 2014 or the triathlon and pentathlon versions bidding for Rio 2016, the swimming events do not dictate in what order the athletes compete.

"It's really important for every discipline, every sport, to improve, to look forward to develop further," FINA executive director Cornel Marculescu was quoted Monday in Dubai by an Associated Press report.

"We will test it in the World Cup and see how this is going and will probably introduce at the world championship if results are acceptable for swimmers and coaches."

Indeed, the mixed relays are on the program for all eight legs of the ongoing short-course World Cup, which runs through mid-November.

Whether the races reappear in mid-December at the 11th FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) in Istanbul remains to be seen.

IOC Enlists Beyond Sport

Beyond Sport will support the IOC in the buildup to the 15th World Conference on Sport for All.

The sport-for social-change-specialists announced the arrangement Wednesday, which will see the IOC looking to its new partner for advice in selecting the next recipients of its Sport for All Grants, a role reprisal from 2011 in Beijing.

Beyond Sport will also help in delivery of the 2013 event, scheduled for April 24 to 27 in Lima, Peru.

"Sport for All is at the heart of the Olympic Movement and closely linked to development through sport. It really touches society at large," said IOC member Sam Ramsamy, chairman of the Sport for All Commission.

"The expertise of Beyond Sport in this area increases the impact of the conference and future initiatives."

Beyond Sport founder Nick Keller added: "The IOC occupies a unique place both within and beyond sport, and the potential impact of Sport for All’s mission is unprecedented in this field."

Media Watch

In this Wall Street Journal editorial, Yulia Gorbunova of Human Rights Watch calls on the IOC to enforce the Olympic Charter’s guarantee of human dignity, encourage Russian authorities to compensate Sergei Khlistov for the demolition of his Sochi home and enshrine promises to respect the property rights of residents affected by Games preparations in the bidding process for future Olympics.

Written by Matthew Grayson

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