Congratulations to a former colleague of mine, Alex Balfour, on his appointment as Head of New Media for the London 2012 Organising Committee - the body which is responsible for staging the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.

Alex, whom I worked alongside (in a cyberspace manner of speaking) with CricInfo between 1996 and 2001, will be responsible for London2012.com, according to the LOCOG press release issued last Friday. Answering to the LOCOG Director of Communications and Public Affairs, Alex will lead the creation, development and management of online structures and facilities for London 2012 over the next six years.

I am sure Alex will excel in his new role and I wish him all the best. Nonetheless, I should draw attention to a factual howler that appears in the LOCOG press release and has found its way into the headings of a few reports on the appointment:

As co-founder and Chairman of CricInfo Alex built one of the world’s largest sports websites from scratch with 20 million customers.

By no stretch of the imagination can Alex be considered a “co-founder” of CricInfo. Alex first became involved with CricInfo in 1995 as a volunteer, a few months before I did, at which time it already had an established presence on the internet as a gopher database hosted on a server at the University of Oregon. CricInfo was founded by Dr Simon King in 1993, and while a number of US-based Indian expats came on board in those formative days of IRC, telnet and gopher, Alex’s involvement was still two years away.

Alex was, however, a foundation member of CricInfo’s board of directors when it became a corporation towards the end of 1999, when he was employed by us as Head of Business Development. (Does this make him a “co-founder” of CricInfo? I’m probably one too, having been one of 53 foundation shareholders in the business when it was corporatised.) He became chairman of CricInfo Ltd towards the end of 2001, after a financial near-death experience saw the departure of Dr King from the company and the retrenchment of a large number of its staff, including me.

“The fans here gave me tremendous support. It seemed that everybody were cheering India.”
- Shiva Keshavan, who finished 25th in the luge at the Torino games on Sunday. (source: Press Trust of India)

Shiva Keshavan couldn’t afford a brand new luge to take to Torino, because he had already spent all his money on a new racing suit. Remember this next time you see Sachin Tendulkar hooning around the streets of Mumbai in another new Ferrari.

Keshavan was India’s sole competitor at Nagano and Salt Lake City. This time, he refused to march in the opening ceremony on Friday night because, as NDTV reports, of what he called was the presence of a large number of officials from India, who have done nothing to promote winter sports in India.

His 25th place was, at least, better than that of Venezuela’s own Werner Hoeger, who finished 32nd out of 36 entrants. The Seattle Times claims Hoeger as a local because, well, he is.

Oh, and Italy’s Armin Zoeggeler won the gold medal.

Chad Hedrick won the USA’s first gold medal of the Torino games on Saturday in the 5000m speed skating. Sunday’s edition of the New York Daily News produced the masterful effort of placing not just Hedrick’s gold medal, but 9/11, into their true perspectives all in one front page.

In late breaking news from the “International Sports Week 1924“, which will one day be renamed the First Olympic Winter Games, we’ve just learned that Great Britain has won the gold medal for men’s curling after it was realised that curling was an official sport in 1924 and did not attain demonstration status until St Moritz 1928.

This bumps the Brits into sixth place on the 1924 medal count, although they are unlikely to advance any further. News of the curling gold was exposed by Glasgow’s Herald and published in their January 23, 2006 edition. Further details on the story can be found at The Curling News.

Congratulations, albeit posthumously, to Robin Welsh, Willie Jackson, Laurence Jackson and Tom Murray of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club.

Who to follow at Torino 2006? Here’s a few suggestions:

Bermuda has one competitor, even he is originally from Southampton. Patrick Singleton will be competing in the Skeleton - he competes on February 17.

The Jamaican bobsled team is back, of course - their event comes up on February 24 and 25.

Peru’s four-man Olympic contingent are all snowboarders.

Venezuela is represented at Torino 2006 by 52 year-old luger Werner Hoeger from that great Venezuelan city of Boise, Idaho. He’s listed 36th to start in the 36-man competition later today Saturday.

There is just one person out of the 211-person Team USA who I intend to track - the one and only Apolo Anton Ohno!

That powerhouse of world sport, Cyprus, is represented by Theodoros Christodoulou in the slalom and giant slalom. He is, however, up against Madagascar’s sole competitor, Mathieu Razanakolona, in both events.

The complete lineup of this year’s winter olympians from Africa (12 athletes from 7 nations) can be found here.

I was kinda hoping that India would have a representative in the biathlon, which starts today, but alas no. Pakistan has two entrants in alpine skiing, but the Olympic website doesn’t specify what events they are entered in.

And finally, the New Zealand curlers: Sean Becker, Lorne Depape, Warren Dobson, Hans Frauenlob and Dan Mustapic. Their first match is against Sweden on Monday morning. A doddle!

Forget the TV replay. Follow the opening ceremony of Torino 2006 with the Ceremony Media Guide (4.4 meg PDF), which is basically a 71-page storyboard of the opening ceremony issued to the media before the start of proceedings.

www.gazzetta.it, the website of La Gazzetta dello Sport (in Italian of course) seems like a good reference point for the next couple of weeks. The Sydney Morning Herald has a correspondent on the ground (snow? ice?) in Torino running a blog called, what else but Piste Take. And on that note, I look forward with interest to The Guardian’s coverage of the Games.

On the other hand, there’s the return of NBCOlympics.com. Also returning is the all-new official 2006 US team beret.

“It’s Athens 2004 time. I’ve found it really hard to get enthusiastic about these Olympics.”
- Rick Eyre, commencing the first of 46 posts about the 2004 Olympics, 13.8.04

It’s just wrong holding the Winter Olympics in the alternate even-numbered year. It’s just not an Olympiad. Do the maths: 2006 divided by 4 equals 501.5. It just shouldn’t be.

And there’s too much sport going on elsewhere this year: the Commonwealth Games, the FIFA World Cup, there’s even a World Baseball Classic to laugh at next month. Even the opening ceremony of Torino 2006 (which I haven’t seen yet and have no real plan to) clashed with the final of the African Cup of Nations in Cairo. Egypt beat Cote d’Ivoire on penalties after a 0-0 draw at the end of ninety minutes (which I haven’t see yet and have no real plan to). Now come on, which would you have rather been watching at 4am on a Saturday morning (or, indeed, None Of The Above?)

The real reason, however, why I am having trouble getting motivated about Torino 2006, is that I can no longer find it in myself to back the Australians. The reason being that we lost our Winter Olympics virginity at Utah 2002. Though, admittedly, Steven Bradbury did it in legendary fashion.

So: what could there possibly be to get excited about? Two things:

1. The underdogs;
2. The curling.

Or, of course, a combination of both. That’s why I will be cheering for the New Zealand men’s curling team.

More in my next post.

The contribution of Coca-Cola to the Olympic Movement has always been the model of a true partnership.

- Jacques Rogge, 1.8.05

This just in from the media desk of the International Olympic Committee:

The International Olympic Committee and The Coca-Cola Company today announced a renewal of their partnership for an unprecedented 12 years, thereby taking what was already the longest sponsorship of the Olympic Games to a record 92 uninterrupted years. The partnership, which began in 1928, was extended during a signing ceremony on the Great Wall of China. The new agreement, which begins in 2009, will see Coca-Cola supporting the Olympic Movement over a period which covers the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, the London 2012 Olympic Games, plus the Olympic Games of 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020.

Welcoming the renewal of the partnership, IOC President Jacques Rogge said, “The contribution of Coca-Cola to the Olympic Movement has always been the model of a true partnership. The Olympic Games would not be where they are today, and so many athletes over the years could not have competed in the Games, without the extensive corporate support pioneered by Coca-Cola as our longest continuous sponsor. Because the Olympic Family and Coca-Cola share the values of Olympism at their deepest level, this is a natural partnership that we hold most dearly.”

The Coca-Cola Chairman, Mr E. Neville Isdell, echoed the President’s comments, emphasising the new atmosphere of Olympic spirit at the world’s leading beverage company. “The privilege of being associated with the Olympic Movement for nearly a century is reflected in this landmark agreement,” Mr Isdell said. “Our investment in the future of the Olympic Games underscores our faith in the Games and how they continue to make our world a little bit better. This long-term commitment comes at a time when those of us throughout the Coca-Cola system are rededicating ourselves to the Olympic spirit. We have recently challenged ourselves not to wait every two or four years to celebrate the Olympic ideal, but to bring to life those values in our everyday lives - to think Olympic, act Olympic, and, indeed, truly live Olympic.” he added.

Also attending the announcement, which was made in China as the country marks three years to go until the Olympic Games of Beijing 2008, was Jean-Claude Killy, three times Olympic Games gold medallist and IOC member, young Chinese diver Wu Min Xia, who won a gold medal and a silver medal at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, together with a host of guests including leadership from both the Beijing Organising Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad and the upcoming Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games.

Coca-Cola will start trading on Wall Street today at $43.77.

The IOC meeting in Singapore has decided today that Beijing 2008 will be the last appearance of baseball and softball at the Olympic Games for the time being. They have been dropped from the 2012 games in London, but are theoretically eligible for re-inclusion in the Microsoft Seattle Olympics of 2016 (remember where you hear it first!)

This is a pity from my point of view, as baseball is one of the few Olympic competitions which capture my interest.

A brief IOC announcement is here. Five other sports are candidates for inclusion in 2012: Roller Sports, Squash, Karate, Rugby (presumably the seven-a-side mutation) and Golf! Later today, the IOC Executive Board will decide whether to submit any of the five to the IOC session, which is scheduled to wrap up tomorrow.

Hopefully, the IOC takes a big reality check and admits none of the five - and continues to reduce the Olympics in size in the years to follow.

Well! I was sure Paris was going to win. It was always a two-horse race. Congratulations London. Well!

About two and a half hours until Paris is named as host of the 2012 Olympics.

Live webcast from Singapore on the IOC website. Alas, none of the candidate cities really have a name that Jacques Rogge can stuff up a la JA Samaranch and “Siddey”.