On the Scene - Olympic Legacies Center Around Sport for All

(ATR) Blue skies in Beijing and sport for all are legacies of the 2008 Olympics, former BOCOG chief Liu Jingmin tells Around the Rings at the 14th World Conference on Sport for All.

"The heritage of the Olympic spirit really depends on the promotion of this spirit among the common Chinese people," he said not long after presenting plans to leverage the magic of three years ago into the programming of Sport for All activities today.

"That’s why it is so important to have this conference in China."

Liu, also deputy mayor of Beijing as well as executive vice chairman of the Beijing Olympic City Development Association (BODA), admitted the outstanding weather enjoyed all week by the 600+ delegates in attendance is in fact another holdover of 2008.

"We can call it a legacy," he told ATR with pride. "At the moment we have 70 or 80 percent good weather in Beijing."

The efforts of BODA to ensure the Games are not forgotten is a common thread running throughout this three-day gathering in the China National Convention Center, itself the former Main Press Centre, International Broadcasting Centre as well as venue for Olympic fencing and pistol shooting.

IOC Sport for All chair Sam Ramsamy, Chinese Olympic Committee president Liu Peng and former BOCOG boss Liu Qi each spoke to the trend during Wednesday night’s opening ceremony, as did IOC president Jacques Rogge on Thursday morning in an exclusive interview with Around the Rings.

"There is definitely a feeling that the government is pushing very much for Sport for All," he told ATR.

"You have also a great urban legacy in many many aspects, and finally you have a reputational legacy in terms of organization because from then on you’ve been organizing many big events," Rogge added with reference to the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, the 2011 University Games in Shenzen, the 2014 Summer Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing and the 2015 athletics world championships bound for the iconic Bird’s Nest.

Legacy No Longer Enough

Ramsamy, the IOC member chairing this week’s conference, tells Around the Rings legacy in the traditional sense is no longer enough to merit success in the eyes of the modern Olympic Movement.

"Whatever happens at major events must not only be sustained but also disseminated," he told ATR, echoing a theme of the many plenary sessions, panels and case studies already in the books in Beijing.

"For that reason, the IOC places a lot of importance on legacy issues."

Ramsamy added that 75 percent of venues for the 2012 Olympics already have legacy uses lined up but that 100 percent is now the goal of the IOC.

Mere Maintenance Also Lacking

Five months before London comes the 10th anniversary of Salt Lake City, the legacy of which Utah Athletic Foundation president Colin Hilton says is just now hitting its stride.

In a Wednesday workshop, he explained how his organization noted declining recreational participation at the Olympic Oval in Kearns as well as skiing and sliding centers in Park City just five years after the Games.

According to Hilton, merely running the venues was no longer enough to attract newcomers to winter sport or even to retain existing athletes. Recreational programming is the answer, he said, citing double-digit participation increases in each of the past four years.

"We consciously did that because we wanted to have a lasting impact beyond just maintaining the facilities," he told ATR minutes after his presentation.

"What we’re doing today to continue the legacy effort and engage the Salt Lake City community is far more rewarding to me than actually having been part of putting on the Games."

Hilton mentioned conversations with his counterparts in past Winter Olympic hosts Lillehammer (1994) and Vancouver (2010) but said he believed the initiative shown by UAF remains unique among such legacy organizations.

Failed Olympic Bid Lives On

Also unique is the work of World Sport Chicago, the legacy organization left behind by the U.S. city’s unsuccessful 2016 campaign.

WSC executive director Scott Myers presented Wednesday a study titled "Becoming a Man: Sports Edition" and conducted in partnership with the University of Chicago.

Researchers are finding their efforts to promote school engagement, cognitive growth and self-regulation among troubled teens through the use of archery, boxing and handball as well as combat sports like taekwondo, wrestling and karate are actually boosting grades and curbing violence in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Chicago is sticking with its commitment to Sport for All, Myers tells ATR, in spite of its loss to Rio de Janeiro.

Legacy Front-of-Mind for LOCOG

Ten months out from the opening ceremony, LOCOG deputy chairman Keith Mills traces the legacy of London 2012 back to the bidding stage.

After an anecdote from 2003 linking Sport for All activity with a drop in youth crime among the areas of east London that would later become Olympic Park, he relayed his desire to propagate that effect elsewhere in the ensuing years.

"Having won the right in 2005 to host the Games and to host the amazing sporting festival that goes with it, we thought it would be a wonderful tribute to the Olympic Movement if we could build our Games around the youth of the world," he told delegates in Thursday’s closing plenary session.

"Easy to say," he added, "but very difficult to deliver."

Mills then delivered a progress report on International Inspiration, a legacy initiative born at the 2005 IOC Session in Singapore and since seeking to enrich the lives of 12 million young people in 20 countries through the power of play.

Under his chairmanship, the program has reached children from Azerbaijan to Zambia, along the way changing lifestyles as well as legislation through sport.

The target of 12 million has long been surpassed, according to Mills, but International Inspiration still has three countries and roughly $9 million in fundraising to go.

The session ended with the Brit’s half-joking, half-serious request for donations from his fellow delegates.

An unnamed IOC member had already contributed to the cause, Mills revealed, after which FIBA secretary general Patrick Baumann – also on-stage for a presentation – forked over a few hundred Chinese RMB.

Written in Beijing by Matthew Grayson.