Salt Lake City Olympic organizers are trying to replace financially troubled Quokka Sports Inc. with another company that can provide flashy graphics, pictures and feature stories for the 2002 Web site. Although Quokka wasn’t an Olympic sponsor, the company provided multimedia fare for the Salt Lake Olympic web site and the NBC Web site for last summer’s Sydney Games. SLOC and NBC, which is televising the Games, gave Quokka a May 1 deadline to find a stable partner or sell to maintain its Olympic deal. And neither has happed. In fact, Quokka once had hundreds of employees and was down to a handful last week. SLOC’s information technology staff can take over Quokka’s job until another partner is recruited.
Attention! Salt Lake City Olympic organizers are looking for singers, dancers, ice skaters, musicians, drill teams, whimsical street performers, improv and comedy teams, acrobats and gymnasts. About 8,500 people are needed to volunteer to be part of the Opening and Closing ceremonies for the 2002 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, and to entertain at the sporting venues, medals presentations and other live sites. About 6,000 of the volunteers will be on the field at the Opening Ceremony. Applications are being taken over the Internet at www.saltlake2002.com. and those who want to participate can sign up as individuals, adult performing groups and children’s performing groups. Deadlines for individual and adult groups is June 4, with auditions beginning in July. Applications for children’ groups will be taken until July 4, with auditions beginning in September.
It’s about time! Construction on the residential areas of the Olympic Village for the 2004 Athens’ Games is scheduled to begin in late May. The Greek government has announced that ground clearing will begin by the end of the week on two important but delayed venues – the weightlifting hall and wrestling and judo arenas. And ground clearing is also under way at the Olympic sailing centre, with bulldozers tearing down empty shacks. Earlier this month the government said the Olympics will cost $5.9 billion, while the Finance Ministry estimates the cost at about $6.2 billion. In July 2000 the government had announced a total budget of about $5.3 billion. The final budget will be announced in June.
Although FIBA had rejected a venue change for preliminary rounds of basketball three months ago, the International Basketball Federation is now satisfied with plans for a new indoor stadium for the Athens Olympics. FIBA officials said the grounds of Athens’ old international airport provided a good location. Last Janaury FIBA asked organizers to hold the preliminaries at the 14,000-seat Peace and Friendship stadium in the Athens port city of Piraeus. The stadium will hold preliminary and final rounds in volleyball.
And finally, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is supporting a German bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, although he has not expressed any preference for a particular region. He will meet German Olympic Committee (NOK) president Walther Troeger Wednesday and a possible bid was to be on the agenda. Four German cities have already expressed an interest in hosting the Games. They are Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Leipzig and Stuttgart. The German Olympic Committee will announce in November whether an official bid for the Games will be lodged with the International Olympic Committee.
