Barcelona Forum Hits Olympic Stride

Sochi, Rio for Friday Sessions

In keeping with the "What’s Next" theme of the 2011 Global Sports Forum Barcelona, leaders of the 2014 Winter Games and 2016 Summer Games appear during Friday morning sessions.

Sochi CEO Dmitry Chernyshenko is up first, followed by Rio de Janeiro President Carlos Nuzman to close the morning.

While the two 45-minute sessions are the only ones devoted solely to the Olympics among 20 presentations during the past two days, Olympic connections are widespread, nonetheless.

IOC member and Ukraine NOC President Sergey Bubka is here, making opening remarks and taking part in the awards ceremony. Besides Nuzman and Bubka, other IOC members in Barcelona included Lassana Palenfo, president of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa and Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch.

Remembering Samaranch

Samaranch’s father was a patron of the GSF, attending the 2009 and 2010 editions; this is the first to be held since his death last April.

To remember the late IOC President, organizers of the GSF will make an annual award in Samaranch’s name to an outstanding Olympic project.

The first recipient: Sochi 2014, which the GSF recognized for its volunteer program. Accepting the trophy, CEO Dmitry Chernyshenko credited the coming Winter Olympics for the genesis of volunteering in Russia. He says volunteering simply did not exist before the Games were given to Sochi four years ago.

Speaking of remembering Samaranch, Carlos Nuzman, shortly after arriving in Barcelona Thursday, paid his respects at the gravesite Samaranch shares with his wife. Juan Antonio, Jr. took Nuzman to the grave, accompanied by Francoise Zweifel, who served as a key aide to Samaranch for years at the IOC and now represents Rio in Lausanne.

Winter Olympic Bids –Barcelona Too?

Representatives from two of the 2018 Winter Olympic bids appeared together on the first panel of the GSB – "Women who make a difference in sport" – and were enjoined in a good natured way from bid trash talk.Annecy outnumbered Munich two-to-one withFrench Minister of Sport Chantal Jouanno and bid vice president Pernilla Wiberg on the panel withKatarina Witt, chair of Munich 2018, a late edition to the women's panel. Both were identfied in the programas Olympic champions, not for their currentduties for2018 bids.

Speaking after the panel in the mediaroom, Jouanno and Wibergchatted freely about Annecy and Witt about Munich. Both say their confidence has been boosted by the recent visits of the IOC Evaluation Commission.

Witt was named to the women’s panel this week. Missing from the 2018 scene in Barcelona was a senior representative from PyeongChang, which decided to forego the Barcelona stop.

It should be noted that Havas Sports and Entertainment CEO Lucien Boyer, who leads the forum organization, plays a key strategic role with the Annecy bid – another good reason to keep Winter Olympic bid talk out of the forum.

But the ban does not apparently apply to those seeking to bring the Winter Games to Barcelona in 2022. They’ll get the chance to talk up their plans during a networking break on Friday. With the city of Barcelona the driving force and main source of financing for the GSF, it’s only natural the city would take advantage of the forum to talk about its plans.

City leaders propose ice events in Barcelona and snow events in the Pyrenees to the north. Polling released in January shows 76 percent support across Catalonia for a Winter Games in Barcelona.

Written and reported in Barcelona by Ed Hula

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