Polish Olympic Committee head Piotr Nurowski has died in the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski last Saturday. Nurowski was 64.
Poland’s Olympic Committee says Nurowski was flying to a memorial service in the forest of Katyn, near Smolensk, to mark the 70th anniversary of the killing of thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviet secret security during World War II.
There were no survivors when the plane crashed just off Smolensk airport.
Nurowski was to lay a wreath to honour Poland’s sports people killed in Katyn.
A former Communist party member and embassy official in Moscow from 1981-84, Nurowski was appointed to head the Olympic Committee in 2005.
Piotr Nurowski has been the 11th president of the Polish Olympic Committee (PKOL) since February 2005. The PKOL was founded in 1919 and since 1924 Polish athletes have won a total of 64 Gold, 86 Silver and 125 Bronze medals at both summer and winter games. Nurowski had planned to celebrate these achievements next Saturday.
Nurowski was born in Sandomierz on 20 June 1945. In 1967 he completed his law studies at Warsaw University and from 1973-1980 was president of the Polish Athletics Federation – the youngest person in the world ever to lead a national athletics association.
Following his time with the Polish Athletics Federation, Nurowski worked in the youth movement and in 1981 he commenced work in the foreign ministry. From 1981–1984 Nurowski worked as First Secretary at the Polish Embassy in Moscow and was then appointed to the role of advisor to the Polish Ambassador in Rabat, Morocco from 1986-1991.
Nurowski was first appointed to the presidency of the PKO in February 2005 and was re-appointed in 2009, and in 2010 was appointed to the European Olympic Committee (EOC) for a second term where he remained as head of the Media Commission.
For everyone – politicians, colleagues in sports administration, the general public and athletes – not only in Poland but on the foreign stage – Piotr Nurowski will be remembered for his great love of sport and for his friendship.
Vancouver Olympic puck nets $13,000 at auction
A jersey worn by Sidney Crosby during a Team Canada game against Switzerland at the Vancouver Olympics has sold at auction for $35,034.
A puck from the overtime period of the gold-medal hockey game is in an Ohio resident’s hands at the cost of $13,088. A tray that held the medals presented to the gold-medal winning women’s hockey team sold for $4,990.
That’s according to Dennis Kim, director of merchandising for the Vancouver Olympic organising committee.
The committee is also using an online auction site to sell artwork, replica tickets, mascots and copies of their pitch book, including one signed by CEO John Furlong.
It went for $665.
London 2012 aquatics centre pools tested
Testing on two of the three pools at the 2012 London Olympics aquatics centre has been completed and the competition pool will be filled with water for the first time this week.
The concrete pools need to be tested with more than 10 million litres of water before they are sealed and tiled.
The 3,000-tonne curved roof will be clad in the next few weeks.
ODA chief executive David Higgins says the testing programme represents a “major milestone” in progressing to the centre’s scheduled completion in summer 2011.
Luge leaders promise safety at Sochi Olympic track
ERIC WILLEMSEN
GRAHAM DUNBAR
AP sports writers
Organisers of the 2014 Sochi Olympics will be “extra cautious” building a sliding centre after originally planning the world’s fastest and most difficult track, a top Russian luge official said.
Genady Rodionov told The Associated Press that the sport “must try to exclude” incidents like the high-speed crash which killed Nodar Kumaritashvili on the day the Vancouver Winter Games opened on 12 February.
“For the whole luge family, it’s hard to bear what has happened,” said Rodionov, vice president of the Russian federation which is working with Sochi organisers to create the Olympic sliding venue. “We’re extra cautious in our calculations, analysing everything.”
According to Valery Silakov, former Russian team head coach and now federation president, the track will still be “technically very demanding.”
Designs are being finalised by Udo Gurgel, the veteran German engineer who also created the Whistler course.
Rodionov and Silakov spoke on the sidelines of International Luge Federation (FIL) meetings that helped complete the sport’s investigation into Kumaritashvili’s fatal crash on the $110 million Whistler track which proved faster than intended.
The 21-year-old Georgian lost control of his sled on the final curve at nearly 145 kph and was thrown clear of the ice before slamming into a trackside steel support pillar.
Luge leaders, who had to deliver their investigation report yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, are determined to restrict racers to 136 kph at Sochi.
FIL president Josef Fendt (pictured) said he wanted to avoid repeating the experience at Whistler where the track proved faster than when it opened in 2008.
“We need this speed limit while planning a track, we can’t do anything when a track is already being built,” Fendt told The AP on Saturday.
Fendt raised his concerns about plans for Sochi one year ago, weeks after Germany’s Felix Loch almost clocked 154 kph during a test event at Whistler. Loch would eventually win Olympic gold.
“That was the reason I sent that letter to Sochi after hearing they were planning to build not only the most difficult, but the fastest track as well,” Fendt said. “The (Sochi) track was designed for speed over 144 kph. That was too much in our opinion.”
Luge officials will soon visit the proposed sliding centre, that also will stage Olympic bobsled and skeleton racing, in the mountain resort of Krasnaya Polyana.
The venue is 40 kilometres from the Black Sea city of Sochi which hosts the FIL Congress scheduled in June.
“We will be able to show the site. We will invite people from government as well and lots of media,” Rodionov said, who is organising the congress where each luge nation can vote on proposed changes that emerge from this weekend’s sessions.
In Russia, winter sports leaders are ready to present their Olympic project after meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last month.
“We decided that we should start building as early as possible. By the end of 2011, we plan to be able to have competitions on the new track,” Silakov said. “We will do our utmost to get it ready in time.”
Towards Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games
The Olympic and Paralympic flags have just been raised over the Black Sea resort of Sochi, meaning that in only four years’ time, the city will be hosting the XXII Olympic Winter Games.
It is with this deadline in mind that the third visit of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s Coordination Commission takes place this week. Under the leadership of its Chairman, Jean-Claude Killy, the Commission will be looking to see the progress made by the Sochi 2014 Organising Committee and its partners since the last full visit of the Commission in May of 2009.
Games preparations
During the three days of visits, the Commission will have the opportunity to visit the Olympic venues in Sochi and Krasnaya Polyana, as well as look at the progress in a number of Games-related areas, including sport, athlete services, media services, transport and culture.
Sochi 2014
Sochi was elected as the host city for the XXII Olympic Winter Games at the 119th IOC Session in Guatemala City on 4 July 2007. Sochi won the vote against the cities of Salzburg (Austria) and PyeongChang (Republic of Korea) in the second round of voting. The Russian city edged out Pyeong Chang 51 votes to 47, with Salzburg having been eliminated in round one.
The 2014 Olympic Winter Games will be the first time that the Russian Federation will have hosted the Winter Games; the Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow. The host city Sochi has a population of 400,000 people and is situated in Krasnodar, which is the third largest region in Russia.
The Games will be organised in two clusters: A coastal cluster for ice events in Sochi, and a mountain cluster located in the Krasnaya Polyana Mountains. This will make it one of the most compact Games ever, with around 30 minutes travel time from the coastal to mountain cluster.
The Sochi Olympic Park will be built along the Black Sea coast in the Imeretinskaya Valley, where all the ice venues such as the Bolshoi Ice Palace, the Maly Ice Palace, the Olympic Oval, the Sochi Olympic Skating Centre, the Olympic Curling Centre, the Central Stadium, the Main Olympic Village and the International Broadcast Centre and Main Press Centre, will be built anew for the 2014 Games. The Park will ensure a very compact concept with an average distance of 6km between the Olympic Village and the other coastal venues.