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34 • Touchline • Issue 17
SPORTS
SHORTS
FIFA PRESIDENT BLATTER, 77,
UK SPORT CUTS ELITE-LEVEL
WANTS IOC AGE LIMITS SCRAPPED
FUNDING OF SEVEN SPORTS
Sepp Blatter, the 77 year old president of football’s global
governing body FIFA, has called for the International Olympic
Committee to scrap its age limits for members. Under current
rules Blatter must step down from the IOC in three years’ time.
He said that a study by FIFA had found that age limits could be
discriminatory. He added that members should only be voted
out if they are incapable of performing their duties.
Currently IOC members must resign at the age of 70 if they
joined after the beginning of 1999, while members who joined
before then can serve until they are 80. A decision on whether
to change the age limit could be taken in December 2014.
UK Sport, the national high-performance sports agency, has
withdrawn its financial support of seven sports, including
basketball, following its annual investment review of summer
Olympic and Paralympic sports.
Investment is targeted where it has the greatest chance of
succeeding using a ‘No Compromise’ philosophy which targets
investment at those most likely to deliver medals at Olympic
and Paralympic level. The British Basketball national governing
body, which initially saw its funding cut last year before
winning a reprieve, is the most high-profile victim. However, UK
Sport also axed funding for the Olympic sports of synchronised
swimming, water polo and weightlifting and the Paralympic
sports of five-a-side football, goalball and wheelchair fencing,
having decided that they had not done enough to prove they
can win medals at the 2016 and 2020 Olympic and Paralympic
Games in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, respectively.
The UK’s high-performance system is currently enjoying
unprecedented levels of investment and UK Sport said that
it would invest about £350m (€423.7m/$574.7m) of National
Lottery and Exchequer funds into preparing Great Britain’s
athletes for the Games, with the agency increasing funding to
18 Olympic and Paralympic sports.
The European Federation of American Football (EFAF) has
launched a new top-flight league starting from this year to
include six teams hailing from Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
The Big 6 Europe league will begin in May with teams Raiffeisen
Vikings Vienna, Swarco Raiders Tirol, Calanda Broncos, Berlin
Adler, New Yorker Lions and Dresden Monarchs. The six clubs
will be split into two groups to eventually face off in the season-
ending Eurobowl.
NEWAMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE
LAUNCHES IN EUROPE
A German anti-doping laboratory using a new steroid test has
found 266 positive cases in the past year and is finding other
positives in retesting of old samples.
Cologne-based scientist Hans Geyer revealed detailed figures
at a FIFA anti-doping conference in November last year. The
lab found 184 cases involving banned drug stanozolol and 82
cases of steroid oral turinabol.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) used the new
test at the Sochi winter Olympics. It will also be used in the
planned retesting of samples from the 2008 Beijing Olympics
before the eight-year statute of limitations expires in 2016.
Many of the positive tests – recorded since November 2012 –
involved athletics, weightlifting and wrestling, and were also
reported to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the
respective sports governing bodies.
GERMAN LAB FINDS 266
DOPING CASES LAST YEAR