BREAKING: NBC Gets A New Four-Five Ringed Circus Deal

NBC/Universal has come out on top for the next four open winter and summer competitions defeating both ESPN and Fox for the bids on Sochi, Rio, 2018, and 2020...

"I think we had a compelling presentation and we hope they felt the same way. The rest is business," longtime Olympics NBC host Bob Costas said after the Comcast/NBCU presentation earlier in the day to the Philadelphia Inquirer's Bob Fernandez in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The other two networks thought that the absence of Dick Ebersol may hurt the Peacock's bid, but it didn't in the long run...

From Brian D Fischer's Twitter feed...

So NBC/Comcast will pay $6 billion for the Olympics over 10 years (2010-20). By comparison, NFL was supposed to get $4billion in 2011 alone.

ESPN just sent out one of those congratulatory e-mails:
From The Big Lead...

“We made a disciplined bid that would have brought tremendous value to the Olympics and would have been profitable for our company. To go any further would not have made good business sense for us. We wish to congratulate the IOC on a fair and transparent process, and we offer our best wishes to Comcast/NBC. We put our best foot forward with a compelling offer that included the enthusiastic participation of all of The Walt Disney Company’s considerable assets.”

IOC Strips China Of Sydney Bronze

The International Olympic Committee has stripped China of its bronze medal from the women's team competition at the 2000 Sydney Games for using an underage gymnast.

((ed. note- "an underage gymnast...?" Duh...))

Dong Fangxiao's results from Sydney were wiped out in February after the International Gymnastics Federation ((FIG)) determined she was only 14 at the 2000 Olympics. Gymnasts must either be 16 years old or turn 16 during the Olympic year to be eligible.

Since Dong's scores contributed to China winning the bronze, FIG recommended the IOC take the medal back.

Double duh...

The medal now goes to the U.S. women, who had been fourth.

Dong was also stripped of her sixth-place result in the individual floor exercises and her seventh place finish in the vault.

Here's some highlights from the Sydney shenanigans...
Scott Russell is doing your play-by-play...
Dong is first up...
((HT: CBC/IOC/gymnfanus19972000))


The HQ realizes it took the IOC ten years on a sunny day in Dubai to dock the bronze. We guess now that it will be 2018 before the home-game shenanigans will be addressed...

So Much For That Idea: Chicago First Out For 2016, Blame It On Rio

The race for the 2016 Olympics has come down to just Rio de Janeiro and Madrid, with the International Olympic Committee eliminating Chicago in a stunning first round of voting.

Tokyo was knocked out in the second round.

That left just Rio and Madrid still in the mix. The IOC voted again to separate the two and elected a winner, which will be announced by IOC president Jacques Rogge later Friday.

Madrid's surprising success in reaching the final round came after former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch made an unusual appeal for the Spanish capital, reminding the IOC members as he asked for their vote that, at age 89, "I am very near the end of my time."

It's easy to figure out who really has more stroke when it comes to one of the more (what's the word we're looking for) "Fix-able" sporting events around...

The old head of the Committee that governs the competition or the leader of the free world... those of us at OSG HQ have the gut feeling Chicago2016 didn't "satisfy" enough of the voting members during their tours of the city and proposed facilites...

Just do a search and find out what the Atlanta Committee members had to "satisfy" those members with to securte their vote...

Here's coverage from various Chicago outlets:
The four-letter's city-specfic website
Their sports-talk format station- WMVP AM1000
The Chicago Tribune
The bid website- where OSG HQ will be chasing cheap gear very soon...

And here's WGN-TV's coverage
 

The 2016 version of the competition is heading to Rio de Janeiro...
Good for them... they sucked up the most...

IOC Uncovering More Beijing Cheats

((HT: FoxSports))

Eight months after the closing ceremony, the IOC is uncovering more drug cheats from the Beijing Games.

The International Olympic Committee, staying true to its pledge to fight doping, said Tuesday that six athletes have been nabbed by retesting their blood samples for CERA, an advanced version of the blood-boosting hormone EPO.

A person familiar with the results told The Associated Press the latest tests caught three track and field athletes, two cyclists and one weightlifter.

The person, speaking on condition of anonymity because the names haven't been released by the IOC, said a male track and field athlete who won only one gold medal was one of the athletes. The other medalist was in cycling.

The IOC did not identify the athletes or sports involved, saying it was notifying the competitors through their national Olympic committees.

The Italian Olympic Committee said one of the six was an Italian athlete, though it declined to name him. The Italian news agency ANSA identified him as cyclist Davide Rebellin, silver medalist in the road race.

U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman Darryl Seibel said the federation hadn't received notification from the IOC of any adverse findings involving a U.S. athlete.

"Unless we hear otherwise, we are treating no news as good news," Seibel said.

The IOC reanalyzed a total of 948 samples from Beijing after new lab tests for CERA and insulin became available following the Olympics. The testing began in January and focused mainly on endurance events in cycling, rowing, swimming and athletics.

"The further analysis of the Beijing samples that we conducted should send a clear message that cheats can never assume that they have avoided detection," said Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC medical commission.

Coaches, athletes and anti-doping organizations welcomed the announcement, saying it helps restore credibility to Olympic sports.

"I'm in favor of anything they're doing to clean up the sport," said Glen Mills, coach of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who won three gold medals in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 4x100 relay - all in world-record times.

Bolt "has not heard anything - and he will not hear anything," Mills said by telephone from Jamaica.

The IOC will wait for word from the national Olympic bodies before holding any disciplinary hearings. Athletes found guilty of doping face being disqualified from the Olympics and stripped of any medals they won.

The positive findings were based on "A" sample test results. Athletes will be allowed to ask for a testing of their backup "B" samples.

In the meantime, national and international bodies are free to impose provisional suspensions of athletes, the IOC said.

A Greek race walker, Athanasia Tsoumeleka, announced in January that she had tested positive in the new Beijing checks. Tsoumeleka, who finished ninth in Beijing in the 20K walk, was charged by a Greek prosecutor earlier this month with using banned drugs.

The IOC previously disqualified nine athletes for doping at the Aug. 8-24 Olympics. In addition, there were six doping cases involving horses in the equestrian competition.

The IOC has already stripped four athletes of Beijing medals - Ukrainian heptathlete Lyudmila Blonska (silver), Belarusian hammer throwers Vadim Devyatovskiy (silver) and Ivan Tsikhan (bronze) and North Korean shooter Kim Jong Su (silver and bronze) [pictured, thanks The Guardian)).

The IOC is storing doping samples for eight years so they can be tested retroactively when new detection methods are developed.

The World Anti-Doping Agency welcomed the IOC findings. Under the WADA code, athletes can be disciplined up to eight years from the date of a doping violation.

"We suggest that athletes who may be tempted to cheat keep this reality in mind," WADA president John Fahey said. "We believe that retrospective testing serves as a strong deterrent."
Lauryn Williams, a member of the U.S. track and field team in Beijing and a 2004 silver medalist in the 100 meters, also backed the testing system.

"To go ahead and weed out the cheaters is a good thing," she said. "To find out there are additional cheaters is not a great thing."

IOC To Investigate Gymnasts Ages... Finally...

After rumbling and grumbling from a few different fronts, the International Olympic Committee is finally going to ask gymnastic muckety mucks to investigate the reported ages of the gold-medal winning Chinese squad.

Multiple sources have found documentation from inside China itself that the ages of three of the women/girls are in doubt. He Kexin ((pictured, thanks How Hwee Young/EPA/Times of London)) Jiang Yuyuan and Jang Yilin may be as young as 14. An article from the government-run Xinhua News Agency from early November even goes as far as declaring He is only 14.

((More on the "Stryde Hax" website below))

"We've asked the gymnastics federation to look into it further," IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said Friday. "If there is a question mark and we have a concern, which we do, we ask the governing body of any sport to look into it."

The allowable age for gymnasts to participate in the games is 16.

The International Federation for Gymnastics ((FIG)) has always maintained that a valid passport is evidence enough for verifying a competitor's age. FIG has not questioned the Chinese to this point.

"We are not in a position to say `It's good, it's not good.' It's a government document," FIG president Bruno Grandi said earlier this week in an interview with The Associated Press.

The Chinese are doing their best Roger Clemens-on-Capitol Hill impression to date. He was asked in a press conference after the gymnastics competition about her age:

"I was born in 1992 and I'm 16 years old now," He said Monday. "The FIG has proved that. If I'm under 16, I couldn't have been competing here."

Whaddya wanna bet that the Bruno Grandi quote will be the basis of any and every investigation that FIG and the IOC conduct from this point forward...?

Just axin'...

SI's coverage is hyah

The Times of London has a boatload of coverage hyah

Jane Macartney's coverage on "Stryde Hax" is hyah

The "Stryde Hax" website is hyah.
Follow the chain of documents, it's tremendous- even if it's a long read...

Randi Kaye's story from CNN is below...
Thanks to CNN and the youtube...