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Touchline • Issue 17 • 35
COMMONWEALTH GAMES MAY GO
‘BACK TO BASICS’ TO BOOST
INTEREST IN 2022
The Commonwealth Games could be reduced from 17 to 10
sports in an effort to increase interest in staging the 2022 Games,
according to outgoing Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF)
chief executive Mike Hooper.
Hooper, who has announced he will leave the CGF following
Glasgow 2014, said that reducing the number of sports could
encourage interest.
“We recognise the tough economic times but we have flexibility,”
he told UK public-service broadcaster the BBC. “If someone wanted
to predicate a bid on a theme of ‘bring it back to basics’, then they
could do so. Clearly the cost structures associated with putting on
a 10 sports Games versus a 17 sports Games is vastly different and
that has always been the case.”
Ten sports is the minimum allowed by the CGF, with 17 the
maximum. Bids for the 2022 Games must be received by March
2015.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) has excluded Tunisian
players from competing in this year’s Davis Cup, following the
Tunisian Tennis Federation ordering one of its players not to play
against an Israeli competitor.
At the 2013 Tashkent Challenger, the Tunisian Tennis Federation
breached the ITF Constitution by interfering with international
sporting practice and ordering Tunisian Malek Jaziri to not compete
against Israeli Amir Weintraub
The ITF board of directors was not satisfied with the case put
forward by the Tunisian Tennis Federation and unanimously voted
to suspend Tunisia from participating in the 2014 Davis Cup.
ITF president Francesco Ricci Bitti said: “There is no room for
prejudice of any kind in sport or in society. The ITF board decided to
send a strong message to the Tunisian Tennis Federation that this
kind of action will not be tolerated by any of our members.”
Rio’s waterways are still highly polluted with
the average faecal pollution rate around the
Olympic Park 195 times the level considered
safe by the United States.
Nearly 70 percent of Rio’s sewage goes
untreated, according to the Associated Press.
The current pollution rate around the Olympic
Park is also 78 times that of the Brazilian
government’s satisfactory limit – a much
lesser standard than that of the US.
“There’s no way to work in these waters,
where you are literally neck deep in faeces in
some places, and not be afraid of the health
effects. Show me the Olympic athlete who’s
going to have the courage to get into waters
like these,” ecology professor Ricardo Freitas
told the AP.
Rio’s Olympic organising committee COO
Leonardo Gryner also acknowledged the
extent of the water quality problem, but said
projects were “well advanced” to achieve the
city’s commitment to reduce 80 per cent of
the pollution flowing into Guanabara Bay,
where sailing and wind surfing events are to
be held for the 2016 Games.
Among the sources of pollution includes
pollution from the shippyard in Rio de Janeiro.
RIO POLLUTEDWATERS
195 TIMES OVER
SAFE LEVEL
ITF EXPELS TUNISIA FROM
2014 DAVIS CUP