stevepog

Frauds, fakes and tricksters - an entertaining post on The Roar

2011-06-06T08:32:00.000+01:00

The Roar is one of those sports blogs that usually delivers more than it promises and has only recently begun to be inundated by advertising.
One of my favourite recent posts has been by Geoff Lemon, in the second half of a piece on sporting fakes and frauds.
Melbourne's hosting of the 1956 Olympics is one of the glory stories that Victoria sports chiefs gloat about, so I'm not surprised the story of young Sydney students successfully swapping the Olympic torch for a silver chair leg topped with flaming underwear has been kept quiet for decades.
Likewise, the monumental failure that was the Firepower magic proton pill or whatever it was meant to be wasn't publicised nearly enough, despite the massive amount of investors money the owner poured into sports sponsorship. I remember Crikey blogging heavily about this catastrophe in 2008 but more serious sports reporters and financial journalists should have taken notice when the company's failure led to the Sydney Kings basketball team collapsing.
Apart from that, Lemon's post is an entertaining read, as is much of The Roar's commentary. And seeing as I've had so little time to blog about sport, it's great to see more serious and indepth pieces on Aussie sport in the blogosphere.

Great Racing Gambles and Frauds

Barcelona's right to claim 'best in history' tag, says Murray

2011-03-11T04:10:00.000Z

For those not in the know about Aussie sports broadcasters, Les Murray is the long-time champion of soccer/football in this country. His insightful comments and ability to break down the game for hardcore fans and newcomers alike has made him one of our favourites.

His new blog post about Barca's claim to being 'best of all time' does show his passion for the current team but as his following history lesson on the past 'best teams' shows, Barcelona does have a decent claim for the title.

Now to the comments section: as always with people commenting on articles like this, there are a mix of fan overload, unverified stats ("FC Barcelona is unique in football history with 65 to 70% possesion (sic) against any football team") and English football supporters who have stumbled onto the wrong site.

Still, the words of praise for Murray amongst all the flag waving proves again the esteem in which he's held.

Positive signs that NBA UK isn't just a Euro marketing tool

2011-03-03T05:26:00.000Z

So after a few years living in London and occasionally complaining about the poor treatment of UK basketballers, I return home to Australia only to hear that the New Jersey Nets and Toronto Raptors are playing the first regular season game in Britain.

And by the sounds of it, the fans and complete strangers to the game are all going crazy for it. Photo and comments on NBA UK's Facebook page attest to that.

Still, the Nets and the Raptors? When Heat play Lakers or Celtics play the Bulls, then we can get really excited. I know the NBA has domestic ticket sales in mind versus the huge cost of flying the entire showcase to the UK but if they really want the European fanbase to build, bringing in big-ticket teams is the only way to go.

Just look at some of the votes cast on Fan Night. Last time I checked, Wolves v Bucks received only 2% of the votes from fans as their favourite lineup of the night. But those two teams are more likely to play in a London showdown than the league leaders.

So many sports stories, so little time etc.

2011-02-16T03:37:00.001Z

It's funny that now I've moved further into sports marketing and sponsorship than in the last two years, I've had less time and inclination to write about it.
Partly because some of the stories I could have written about here could have got me fired but mainly due to the limited time I can give over to blogging, with the move back to Australia, settling in, finding work, moving house and all the rest.
Some amazing stories outside my current job are the current hot trend of verbally bashing AFL footballers, with non-sporting types deriding footballers as role models and those in the know supportive of their positive influence on kids.
Then on the US side are the challenges faced by college and pro athletes when using Twitter, as explored extensively in this article.
I attended a forum on sport and social media run the excellent Digital Sport Australia last night and athletes' Twitter tendencies was one of the topics. There was general agreement that athletes should tweet for themselves (rather than designate a publicity-hungry family member or staffer to do it for them) and they should be genuine and honest without using it to overly plug or attack sponsors. Pretty simple really but it seems beyond the ability of some players and celebrity sports stars to do that.
The Digisport people put on a top event so follow the hashtag #dssau for details on upcoming events and sports stories of interest.

Images from the deep - inspiring footage from a marine scientist

2010-11-13T04:17:00.000Z

I usually blog about land-based sports but will make an exception as an opportunity to show some of the brilliant underwater video work being done by a US colleague Annie Crawley.
She's not an athlete, though her frequent scuba trips would probably qualify her as such, but the footage she brings back from every journey is always stunning and ocean-lovers from surfers and scuba-divers to fishermen couldn't help but be inspired by the images.
I met Annie at a science conference in North Carolina in January 2010 and watched a few of her amazing presentations on her ocean-based education programs. We chatted about her passion for the ocean and, as someone based in London and away from my beloved Pacific Ocean for two years, it revived my inspiration to want to get back in the water.
Her most recent voyage was to the Galapagos Islands. No need to say any more, just watch the video!

Do sports fans at live games really need more stimulation?

2010-09-27T03:32:00.000+01:00

There are times in a serious sports watcher's life when they question whether three hours spent yelling at players and umpires on a rain-soaked pitch has really been worth it.

Or for soccer supporters who sit through a string of nil-all or one-all draws, drained of the satisfaction gained from a pivotal victory, who might wish they had an option of something else to watch than the boring spectacle in front of them.

It was only some time before a professional sports league decided fans needed more excitement and, rather than the baseball tradition of just running more colourful and annoying images on even-larger stadium screens, the time must have come for ticketholders to have their own personal entertainment units along with their overpriced hotdogs and lukewarm beer.

These FanVision gadgets, discussed in this post in the New York Times, allow American football viewers to stream footage from the game in front of them as well as several live games from other stadiums.

Teams will sell their own branded units to fans and it's expected that iPhone-draining apps are also on their way from teams such as the New York Giants and the Major League Baseball stable.

While there are positives for fans way up in the nosebleed section who want to know which of the ants on the field scored or people returning from bathroom or bar queues to catch up on missed play, this looks to be further increasing a sense of detachment from the game.

For a paid-up club member, attending and actually watching every game of a team's season either pays off in end-of-season finals success or the hope that their following season will bring long-awaited reward.

For players on the field then to look up into the stands and see supporters staring at tiny video screens, must bring with it some kind of disillusionment with their own achievements. Yes, this may have already happened with the flood of iPhones and similar devices but there should be a limit to how much of fans' attention the NFL, MLB or other leagues want taken away from the onfield action.

No doubt marketing heads in the big leagues have claimed FanVision and other tools are a way of 'owning the space' and taking a slice of the cash to be generated by live-action video content.

What they continue to forget is the reason fans sometimes go back to the lower-paid minor league and country junior competitions: to escape the overstimulated environments and enjoy the simplicity of a game between two teams where the only instant replay is in a viewer's memory bank.

"I. Don't. Want. Your. Life" and other screen sports gems

2010-03-09T15:47:00.006Z

In a recent discussion with friends about the new British basketball feature film Freestyle, which I plan to review as soon as I can manage the two hours off from normal life, we got onto the dicey subject of the best and worst sports films of recent memory.

Obviously, the movie referred to in the title had an early mention. Varsity Blues falls, in my view, into the bad sports movie camp, despite some lovable characters (not including James Van Der Beek doing an appalling Southern accent) and a halfway decent depiction of a head coach bent on winning the title at all costs.

Where it fell down was in the actual game scenes. Obviously you don't expect super-realism - this is not a Dan Marino or Timmy Tebow documentary - but the overused and now very lame cliches of the last five seconds of a game that take up four minutes of screen time (and the annoying use of the Foo Fighters' My Hero set to pictures of Van Der Beek and co trotting on field for their final push) are vital flaws.

Any Given Sunday, Friday Night Lights and any other football movie with a day in its title did a better job of the game scenes. Some would say even Jerry Maguire did better on game action but those people are idiots.

Varsity Blues

On the basketball front, there have been too many bad films to list here. I say bad as in the films that lost out when it came to the actors' believability, through both acting and gameplaying ability. I've never rated Kevin Bacon as an actor and he lost major points with his scarcely comprehendible role as a jaded college basketball coach in The Air Up There.

A more streetball-focused film, Above the Rim, had some very tight game scenes but was let down by appalling acting. And I won't even go into the major dent in Michael Jordan's reputation gained by doing Space Jam.

The film that non-players and court stars all can relate to and enjoy in the same way was White Men Can't Jump. Woody and Wesley handled those parts exceptionally and the director and cinematographer showcased both stars' strengths: Wesley with the physical game action, Woody with comedic moments and the actually believable three-point shootout. It's a very well-shot and edited movie that can make you believe the actor really did hit that tray or made the game-clinching dunk without the obvious mashing together of various takes.

And - the key ingredient in my opinion - a good sport film will make you want to get off the couch and go out to play the sport you've just watched. WMCJ did that over and over again for me, in the days when highlight reels from NBA games weren't just filled with huge dunks and the achievements on screen looked, well, achievable to the average baller.

White Men Can't Jump

Winter Games are over, it's time for a breakdown

2010-03-03T16:59:00.001Z

I have to give a shout out to Five Tool Tool for his interesting and admittedly biased coverage of the Winter Olympics, especially the ice hockey that had many Canadians praising the Own the Podium program that was so hated by other countries.

Though it's obviously diferent for a bobsled rider and a hockey jock: one has to adapt to a technically difficult track at short notice, the other has to put skates and helmet on, go out on a random patch of ice and hurt somebody.

Anyway, here's the FTT's humorous recap of the greatest Winter Games we could have expected in a global recession:
http://fivetooltool.blogspot.com/2010/02/top-12-lessons-learned-so-far-from.html

Two winter Olympic golds for Australia!!

2010-02-25T15:35:00.000Z

There will much written in the next few days about the significance of Australia winning two gold medals at the Winter Olympics, including the most recent effort by young freestyle skier Lydia Lassila.
It's a medal in an event that should make Australians extremely proud and is set to send shockwaves through the sport (a big claim I know but hey, it's already making headline news in San Diego, of all places).
I interviewed Lydia back when she had a different surname and was trailing in public profile behind Alisa Camplin, Jacqui Cooper and Kirstie Marshall (details on them and other freestyle Australian Winter Olympians here).
Camplin was the golden girl of the time and Lydia the young up-and-comer, so it's fantastic to see her taking the top spot in the sport.
I read a few of the Facebook status updates that flickered through on the Vancouver 2010 website and, aside from the excitement, was struck by comments by a few Aussies along the lines of, 'Australia doesn't even have snow and we won a medal'. Um, obviously these people have never been to southern New South Wales, Victoria or Tasmania if they're under the impression there is no snow in Oz.
I understand the more basic meaning of the statement, that Australia does not have the same levels of snow, mountains of high altitude or length of season experienced in other countries. But it's sadly an often-held misunderstanding that our country has no snow at all.
Newsflash: the whole of Australia is not desert. Google 'Australia percent desert' and you see a whole range of figures, various websites claiming from 33% to 70% of the country is desert/semi-arid (though I trust Yahoo Answers and Wikianswers even less than I believe in UFOs).
But the rest of Australia experiences varying climates, so it makes sense than in the colder southeast, where the mountains can top 2200 metres, a good season can generate a 1-2m snowbase and often quality powder to go with it.
And while the crowds are sometimes ridiculous and lift ticket prices exorbitant, I wish more Europeans and Americans would be able to visit us during a good season, help give the Aussie snowsports industry a lift and prove that when we win a gold medal in the Winter Games, it's not always due to a last-minute pile-up, Steven Bradbury fashion.

Returning from the bench, where only science nerds dwell

2010-02-19T15:05:00.001Z

It's an odd thing, planning to head back to my old industry of sport after nearly two years in health and medical public relations.

Many of my UK and US contacts are in health and science and I've had the occasional display of surprise when I say I want to return to sports PR. For science communicators, sports writing and promotion is often a foreign and unknown quantity, something that was made plain by this comment from a fellow science writer yesterday:

I had to Google the term 'double teaming' as I wasn't sure what it meant.

The comment related to a headline about two cancer-beating proteins, which when combined with a special drug, have been shown to effectively knock out cancer cells in the lab (if you want to know more, here some detail on the process).

So the company freelance writer's headline suggestion of 'Double-teaming cancer' as a basketball reference made complete sense to me and none to anyone else. And I just hope the commenter had Safe Search on when she googled that term.

One of the areas I’m relishing in working on is the reason I started this blog and my own Twitter account: the chance to combine sports writing, opinion, health news and social media.

On a corporate level this will be an interesting shift: after working in the aforementioned science field and handling SM for a small company, I have a better understanding of what types of stories scientists want to read about. And while I still regularly read sports news pages and blogs, talking solely to that audience will be a welcome challenge.

On the social media aspect, here's a link to a promotional video showing what my former employer in Australia has been up to while I'm away.

When I left Monash Sport two years ago, they were cautious of the uses, audience and effects of social media but have obviously grasped the basics after setting up Facebook groups, Youtube and Metacafe channels and an underfollowed Twitter account.
It’s a healthy cultural shift and one that their members are obviously enjoying.

Did I forget it was winter, amidst the ball sport madness?

2010-02-12T15:21:00.002Z

I don't talk much about snowboarding in my writing, despite it being in my top four favourite sports since I took it up 10 years ago. That first drop, on my third ever run at Mt Seymour near Vancouver, was only three or four feet but that was the point where it was cemented in my sporting passions.

And if money was no object when choosing a dream house, it would be extremely tough choice between a snow-capped mountain lodge and an out-of-the-way beachside farmhouse.

With the Winter Olympics kicking off this weekend, it's a also a brilliant time for newspaper readers in those cities/towns/states where board, sled and ski sports are pretty much non-existent in the sports pages. In the UK, jaded football writers have taken to talking up our skeleton and boardercross prospects while journos at the free Sport magazine (whose website sadly carries only an e-edition) after forced to dumb down their usually insightful interviews for a largely clueless public.

Even though only cable channel Eurosport will carry the coverage and no doubt do it poorly, I'll still no doubt grab a few hours at a pub to get more visual inspiration for an upcoming trip to French Alps.

But often when it comes to watching snowboarding videos, I glaze over after a few minutes due to the inevitable spin-to-win halfpipe footage. Sure, I've never seriously ridden park or pipe but there's nothing I find as interesting on the pipe as the buzz I get watching big mountain riding, Warren Miller film style.

Which is why this brilliant clip caught my immediate attention: some tricky rail grinds and obligatory dance music (whatever happened to good surf/snow punk rock??) sure but the open off-piste riding is where it stands out. And when it comes to talented freaks like Shaun White or this video star Tadej Valentan-Elektro, I'd watch them hill riding any day over a double cork on a pipe wall. Enjoy.

Tadej Valentan-Elektro.2009 from Nejc Hudolin on Vimeo.

What's more important: the Superbowl's best plays, best ads or the 'triumph of the human spirit'?

2010-02-08T12:00:00.005Z

So the Superbowl has been done and won by corporate America and those wearing Peyton Manning jerseys should be finished drowning their sorrows in Bud Light and drunkenly signing up for a cheap Go Daddy internet package. Saints fans may have moved on from their celebratory texting on their new Motorola phones to Googling "Timmy Tebow and Focus on the Family" (below) instead of a sly search for Megan Fox.

There may even be some out there counting the 'triumph over adversity' style news stories that are piling up on the news pages as sports reporters are encouraged to go beyond the 'Saints win, Colts lose' stream and search for meaning in a game that shouldn't, in my opinion, be linked with mentions of a hurricane or Oprah.

As so many news reports are sydnicated these days, it's hard to know whether a well-meaning hack was looking for a deeper meaning in this UK Telegraph report or just a link to an internationally-known event to attract those who know nothing about the American brand of football:

"Quarterback Brees completed 32 of his 39 passes for 288 yards and two touchdowns to earn the Most Valuable Player award, with the Saints winning in their first Super Bowl appearance after 42 years in the National Football League - and four-and-a-half years after their city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina."

As a former sports journalist, I understand the need to drag in empathy-winning material to make an otherwise dull story exciting or push a slightly interesting story into backpage gold. There was one story I remember where a champion cyclist was tipped as favourite to win the first desert ride across the harsh Australian outback, only to have his sole bike wrecked in a minor collision a day before the start. He managed to wrangle a sub-standard loan bike from a friend and was still able to not only complete the ride but win (not in record time, that would have been too much). It was a great story but in the end the most important details were the riders, the conditions and the overall event itself, not any external hype.

I think it's either the fault of lazy reporting or an editor who wants the front page too much, when a sports story focuses too much on the human interest angle. Yes it matters that the Saints could re-emerge after Hurricane Katrina to win the game because ordinary fans celebrating on the New Orleans streets (or maybe just those intervewied by the WaPo) claimed it as a victory over the flood.

But is it important that a PETA ad was banned from the prime-time viewing slot because of partial nudity? This is barely news, any more that it was when PETA ads were being banned four years ago.

What did matter was that a Colts player battled on through injury, that Tracy Porter intercepted a pass by the Colts star quarterback to touchdown at the opposite end for the win. No marketing slogan or emotive story should take the limelight from details like that.

If they do, then we may as well Tivo the game and next day just watch the ads, eat Frito-Lays and drink Pepsi from one of these ridiculous party packs (above) and convince ourselves that winning a football game really can help people recover from a natural disaster.
PS. I loved this post from The Onion on the true meaning of ~~Christmas~~ a Superbowl win

Why American college sports teams have all the luck

2010-01-21T11:52:00.007Z

When I stepped into the Cameron Indoor Stadium (an odd name I thought but then it states its purpose) last week, it was the peak of my four days in North Carolina.

I was actually there to attend a conference on science and the web but two sidetrips to Durham and Chapel Hill being available, I wasn't going to pass up the chance to see the Cameron court at Duke University or the University of North Carolina football stadium (outdoor, in case you were wondering).
Look at the shine on the court, the electronic scoreboard, the TV camera-friendly lighting, 9300-seat capacity and potential for player sponsorshiop deals and then ask why getting a spot on a US sports team is an internationally-respected achievement. While I wasn't able to catch a game due to tickets being sold out well before I planned the trip (except for the $5000 courtside package), just being in the stadium was enough inspiration for me.

Duke have 15 wins, 3 losses for the season after the 88-74 loss to NC State on Wednesday. Their 6'8" forward Kyle Singler's No 12 jersey can be seen on anyone from freshman to college professor to shopkeepers around parochial Durham (and London UK, now that I splashed out to buy the cheaper $60 away strip).

Glancing down the All-American wall of fame at Duke (small section pictured left) was like a trip back to my first days playing ball in high school, seeing names like Christian Laettner, Jason Williams and Grant Hill slotted in amongst players who may have been just as well known in their respective sports. Whether Singler follows these college legends to the NBA is another question but with the positive reception that greets his consistently high shooting stats, he will no doubt have had all the fame he can handle before he even turns 22 in May.

Play sport, make friends or vice versa

2009-12-03T14:43:00.003Z

Discovered a great site in beta stage while perusing the Beyond Sport pages.
Sports Buddies brings together people from around the world to play whatever they choose, so they can make contact, meet, or create your own groups of mates.

Still in its early stages and it would benefit from having links to gmail or hotmail contact lists but looks good so far and worth a look

Nice plug from blog awards site

2009-11-30T18:59:00.003Z

I've been featured as Blog of the Month on Football Jerseys in their Blog Awards section.

The site averages 200,000+ unique visitors per month and has featured more than 30,000 blogs from the world of football and sport in general.
Thanks for the mention guys

NBA UK gets their act together and Cash gets a serve

2009-11-19T16:51:00.006Z

Well it only took a month for me to write another post and it took that long for whoever runs the NBA UK fan page on face book to upload photos and video from the Take to the Courts days in October.
I made the cut twice for their highlight video though in a watching not playing capacity.

As usual my full-time job and travel has allowed little time for blogging (I do enough of that at work) and there hasn't been much to say about basketball of late.

On the tennis front, whoever is handling the Lawn Tennis Association's PR account must have been saving a good news story for when someone attacked Roger Draper, as Pat Cash did in the now-heavily read London Evening Standard (because it's free).

Former Wimbledon champion Cash hammered Draper's LTA and the state of Brit tennis, sending the LTA PR machine into overdrive and resulting in a full-page tribute to the state of young British tennis the following day. How convenient.

Draper even had his say in a boring and dry column that did nothing to really tackle any of Cash's good points, and he had a few.

Cash may be a loudmouth but he's lived in London for a while now and could contribute a lot to attracting yougsters to tennis, if anyone bothered taking his advice. It's true that UK sports pages so often seems restricted to talking about football, despite what the rest of the country is doing.

In Australia it is a similar story: women's netball and soccer (ok, football) had dismal coverage despite being the top two sports played by teenagers in the whole country. That is now changing as both sports get more money, professionalism and international standing. Tennis doesn't suffer too much from all three but results by Brits seem to be the biggest block in its improvement here

Still hope yet for basketball's future in the UK

2009-10-06T12:37:00.002+01:00

I get cynical about UK basketball often but the weekend was one of those great opportunities to see there are some very enthusiastic players from junior level to streetball warriors who are keen on the game, not just the image.

Though Clapham Common looked like it had been hit by a Powerade, ESPN and EA Sports bulk merchandising drop for two days, seeing the excitement of so many players at the appearance of their Chicago Bulls' heroes was worth the product placement. The NBA Cares program also donated a new court surface - bad timing for us as the weather turns worse but it should last for a few years at a good standard.

The main dunk competition was amazing to watch, some of the boys trying some ridiculous moves and hopefully reminding the sluggish crowd that Dwight Howard and LBJ also started out on street courts, so it's worth cheering for a no-name when they have decent skills.
Here's one example:

That was filmed on my phone but still shows the quality. Ok, most of those guys were from Europe but still, Londoners need all the inspiration they can get.

Homegrown hysteria

2009-09-22T16:17:00.002+01:00

Not that you would know it where I'm living but back home in Melbourne, Australia, people are going understandably mental about the Geelong Cats making their third grand final in three years.
After last year's painful loss, the Cats should bounce back to take this one against the Saints. My girlfriend's hoping that's not the case so we'll no doubt be at odds this weekend.
Nothing much more to add right now, thanks for tuning in

Back in action

2009-09-07T14:16:00.002+01:00

No time for blogging over the past month, away in Scotland for a family reunion and then the US for three weeks and also started a new job in online medical publishing at f1000.com.
I'll start back blogging now that I have some more time, a couple of things I wanted to mention.
I've complained before about the state of basketball in the UK and my trip to the States helped to revive my angst. In a country that created the sport you would expect it to be big, popular and host to the best players (not always the case: English cricket, save their recent Ashes win?) I took in an afternoon at Venice Beach in LA, home to one of the most well-known courts and though the playing standard was lower than I expected, still left impressed and with renewed faith in the game.
The Times today has a great article on Luol Deng and the British team's Eurobasket chances. I say great partly because it's so rare to see the game mentioned in UK press but then that's a key feature in the article's text.
Deng's comment that many Brits "still don’t know we even have a British basketball team" isn't surprising given the generally poor coverage and lack of interest by free or pay TV in screening games in normal (ie not 2-5am) programming.
It's excellent to see LOCOG spending big on basketball, hopefully they'll continue the promo push to get more kids into the sport. Though a top three finish is unlikely at the 2012 Olympics, taking a big scalpy down would be enough to hope for at this stage.

Am I getting repetitive? Good way to check

2009-07-15T15:19:00.002+01:00

I stumbled (literally, not using my favourite time-wasting tool) on Wordle from another friend's blog and could see straight away how useful it can be: analysing the amount of times 'rage' or 'crusty jugglers' (sorry, Hot Fuzz joke) is used in a Daily Mail article or how often try-hard cool reporters talk about Tweeting on their blogs (I'm avoiding it). Sure, it works just like the tag tool but looks much better!

Beyond Sport Summit: closing session

2009-07-10T09:09:00.003+01:00

I've never been to a conference where a speaker or interviewee walks in to a standing ovation but then I've never seen Archbishop Desmond Tutu interviewed live on stage before. His more than capable interviewer Michael Parkinson said it was a first for him as well and it was probably one of his easiest interviews ever - just ask a few simple questions and let one of the most well-known anti-apartheid campaigners talk for the next 40 minutes.
In keeping with the theme of the conference, social change through sport, Parkinson interviewed Archbishop Tutu on his relationship with sport and the way sport helped to 'demolish' apartheid in South Africa. One of the choice quotes: When South Africans travelled oversease during the worldwide anti-apartheid movement, 'sport brought home to the ordinary white person what it means to be a pariah'. Tutu said the movement would continue past his lifetime because of the followers who support it, not because of him.
Archbishop Tutu said hosting the World Cup was a win for the whole continent and would add more fire to the anti-racism movement by bring different cultures together through a shared of football.
Full coverage and clips from the days talk are on the Beyond Sport website.

Beyond Sport Summit: afternoon sessions

2009-07-10T08:58:00.004+01:00

Photograph: Andrew Couldridge/Action Images

The media room computers became occupied for the rest of the afternoon with people checking their Facebook, so without my laptop handy (and still yet to work out blogging from my phone) had no way to upload the rest of the day's happenings.

Lewis Pugh injected some educational fun into proceedings with his description of swimming across the North Pole, claiming 'it's fucking freezing!'
His aim was to expose to world leaders the environmental damage being down at the Pole through a 1km swim, supported by a 29-strong crew. Following the swim, he called the British Prime Minister to inform him of the changes in ice thickness he had seen at the pole from one year earlier, which he suspected helped the announcement of the first UK Climate Change Minister a week later.
An amazing effort in -1.7 degree celcius water for a good cause and Lewis summed up by saying 'sport can carry a message to our leaders'.

Hon Tessa Jowell, Olympics Minister, said sport was a means for change around the world. She said 'dotting in with a few thousand pounds for a project that makes people feel good for a while is not on'. She claimed the Olympics could help improve economies, literacy levels and sporting participation around the world, points that Olympics host cities love to boost but none of which have been conclusively proven.
probably four years away from where a new tenant will move in to the new stadium.
Afterwards in a media interview, Ms Jowell told reporters the Olympic stadium would not become a white elephant but that London "doesn't need another football stadium" and that every Olympic venue would have "a concrete legacy." Having personally seen the concrete legacies of a few Barcelona venues - that is, they turned into unused piles of concrete - I hope London doesn't make the same mistakes.

Beyond Sport Summit: second session

2009-07-09T14:25:00.000+01:00

Livestrong CEO Doug Ullman dealt with cancer as an aspiring soccer star and started a support and awareness program for athletes. Lance Armstrong spoke through a video message on the spread of Livestrong, 'takes a time like you guys to bring these issues to light'.'on behalf of the millions of cancer sufferers around the world, thank you for your passion'. Doug said it was a massive challenge to get media to talk about the cancer problem worldwide, not just Lance's achievement.

He mentioned Livestrong Global Cancer Summit in Dublin in August where they will discuss problems and solutions with the goal of committing 6 billion dollars globally.

Dame Kelly Holmes praised Sue Campbell and Youth Sport Trust for their work with school children.

The concept that businesses are not charities cropped up constantly from corporate partners and Gib Bulloch from Accenture said every partnership needed a solid business case to be successful.

Sir Keith Mills from London 2012 made good point that Olympic bid winners had to follow through on bid promises. Some of the international will involve 20 countries and develop sport in developing world. He said Olympic sponsors needed help to see the Olympis could do so much more for the world than just provide 3 to 4 weeks of action. Keith said he will get unis next year to do long-term benefit study on Olympics and claims this hasn't been done before. IOC representative Christophe Dubi said a report will be compiled with 170 indicators to show the benefits from the Games.

Beyond Sport conference: opening sessions

2009-07-09T11:58:00.003+01:00

Photograph: Andrew Couldridge/Action Images

The early sessions at the Beyond Sport conference have provided some inspiring moments.
Compere Kevin Carroll discussed how hiw life "saved by a ball" and how he rose from a disadvantaged background to become head athletic trainer at NBA team the Philadelphia 76ers.

In the first session, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair described what sport does for us: excites, insipres, promotes tolerance andhelps many get out of a bad home environment. He also said he had learnt the power & limits of government to really develop and promote sport. Lord Puttnam received a round of applause for his points that educating girls creates systemic change and men are respomsible for a majority of the world's problems.
Former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo has journeyed regularly to African countries, including his childhood home in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for the last 18 years to help children develop their social and sporting skills. He said basketball had made it possible for him to open a US$30m dollar hospital in the DRC and admonished FIFA and European football associations for often merely scouting talent in Africa when they could be doing good.
Multi-Olympic gold medallist, swimmer Ian Thorpe, gave a powerful address on his own journey beyond sport, starting a charity at age 18 to help poor and disadvantedg people. He used the speaking opportunity to highlight the major health and socioeconomic problems in Australian Aboriginal communities and said it was disappointing that his own opinion was more important to the media and general public, because of his sports achievements, than that of the experts.

Beyond Sport Summit

2009-07-07T12:10:00.002+01:00

I'm heading along to day 3 of the Beyond Sport Summit for what should be some fascinating insights into how sporting greats, administrators and charity groups are using sport as a means for change across the globe.
The panellists and key speakers include international sporting names such as multi-Olympic medallists Michael Johnson and Ian Thorpe, business and charity heads such as Richard Branson (Virgin), Doug Ulman (Lance Armstrong Foundation) and Lord Puttnam (UNICEF UK) and Beyond Sport Ambassador and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
It's always slightly unnerving to hear present and former athletes, who are on multi-million pound/dollar salaries and endorsement deals, talking about giving something back to the sport or their community but the names I recognise in this lineup have already made big contributions through their charities.
Live updates from the conference are on the website.