EOC Okays European Games for 2015
The vote was not unanimous, but the European Olympic Committees have endorsed the start of a continental games in May 2015. Baku, Azerbaijan will be the host.
The secret vote was 38 for, 8 against and 2 abstentions.
"I don’t see anything serious in it," Hickey said about the no votes during a press conference on the sideline of the EOC meeting.
"Our job now is to sit down and work with all the groups. These games will not impact whatsoever the European Youth Olympic Festival or Games of the Small States of Europe. We have promised that and we will ensure that," said the EOC chief.
About 7,000 athletes will take part in the games, making it the largest multi-sport event hosted in Azerbaijan.
While the sports program is being finalized, 13 European federations have signed letters of intent to be in the games: handball, volleyball, rugby, boxing, judo, taekwondo, triathlon, shooting, badminton, archery, fencing, canoeing and table tennis.
Talks are underway with athletics, swimming, gymnastics and wrestling.
Two non-Olympic sports are also to be included: dance sport and karate, the latter of which is one of the eight sports being considered by the IOC to join the 2020 Olympic program.
Baku organizers say they expect to finalize the sports program by March 2013.
Armenia did not vote, notifying the EOC president that it would not participate to avoid any of the politics over the lingering dispute with Azerbaijan from the war in the Nogorno Karabakh territory that lies between the two nations.
Azerbaijan sports minister Azad Rahimov says Armenia and Azerbaijan regularly compete against other at sports events and that he expects Armenia will come to Baku in 2015.
EOC QuestionsIOCEthics Report
The EOC Executive Committee and general assembly endorsed a resolution supporting leaders of European NOCs named this week in an IOC Ethics Commission report.
The report says a half dozen NOC officials "tarnished the reputation of the Olympic Movement" when they were caught offering to sell NOC tickets to purported ticket agents outside NOC protocols in an undercover operation by
the Sunday Times of London.
NOC officials from Greece, Malta, Lithuania and Serbia were named by the Ethics Commission report.The EOCresolution says the NOC leaders snared in the Sunday Times investigation have not been given the right of due process to defend themselves.
"Given the seriousness of the allegations where reputational damage to senior members of the Olympic Family is at stake, the Committee expressed reservations about the lack of opportunity for those concerned to appear before the full membership of the IOC Ethics Commission, reservations about the process of entrapment through which evidence was obtained and reservations about the absence of legal representation," says the EOC resolution.
The statement asks EOC President Patrick Hickey to convey these points to the IOC President. Hickey, a member of the IOC Executive Board that heard the Ethics Commission report this week at a meeting in Lausanne, is said to have been the lone vote against the EB report, according to EOC officials.The report says it is up to NOCs to decide whether any actions should be taken against the officials.
The resolution calls for the IOC to undertake steps to reform the NOC ticketing program "so as to deliver transparency, equity, and fairness to all NOCs."
Written and reported in Rome by Ed Hula
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