IOC President Honored in Rome

(ATR) As he heads into a final year as IOC President, Jacques Rogge is in Rome to receive a prestigious sports award, with more honors sure to follow.

Rogge will receive the Onesti Prize during a noon ceremony at the Quirinale, the palace of the President of Italy.

The prize is awarded by the Onesti Foundation, created to carry forward the legacy of namesake Giulio Onesti, president of CONI, the Italian National Olympic Committee from 1946 to 1978. He is credited with rebuilding Olympic sport after the war, including winning the 1960 Games for the Italian capital. He was also an IOC member from 1964 to 1981 the year he died at age 69. This year is being marked as the centenary of Onesti’s birth.

Rogge will be feted by the corps of IOC members from Italy, Franco Carraro, Mario Pescante , Ottavio Cinquanta, Francesco Ricci Bitti and Manuela Di Centa, as well as CONI leaders Gianni Petrucci and Raffaele Pagnozzi.

Carraro,Italy’s senior IOC member, heads the Onesti Foundation, which regularly doles out support for Italian sport projects. The Onesti name adorns a number of sports centers in Rome.

Rogge’s visit to Rome comes three months after Italian Prime Minister Mario Monte declared the government would not support the bid from Rome for the 2020 Olympics.

Last week while in Olympia, Rogge was named an honorary citizen of the town where the flame lighting ceremony for the London Olympics was held.

With just 16 months left in his presidency, Rogge will probably be showered with accolades for his 12 years in office. While he can still serve as an IOC member until age 80, Rogge, who just turned 70, has said he will leave the IOC when he steps down in September 2013.

Written by Ed Hula

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