UK-IOC REEDIE Reedie says that the presidents of FIFA and the IOC have agreed that the Winter Olympics and World Cup will not clash

Record ID: 708201

  • Title: UK-IOC REEDIE Reedie says that the presidents of FIFA and the IOC have agreed that the Winter Olympics and World Cup will not clash
  • Date: 28th October 2014
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK (OCTOBER 28, 2014) (REUTERS) WIDE OF CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE) (English) CRAIG REEDIE, INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE VICE-PRESIDENT, SAYING: "There's a general agreement between the presidents of the two organisations that there will not be a clash. That would tend to indicate that the IOC would prefer to see the World Cup before Christmas rather than after Christmas. There is clearly an issue with the European football associations and I'm not sure how FIFA are going to resolve that, but certainly we would not like to have a clash between the Winter Games which is a huge event in its own right as you can see from Sochi, and as you could see from the coverage of Sochi, and the World Cup, which is a huge event in its own right, it doesn't make any sense to have these two big events clashing. We think there is an arrangement in place to avoid that." CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE) (English) CRAIG REEDIE, INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE VICE-PRESIDENT, SAYING: "The 2022 Winter Olympic Games will be a contest between only two cities, Almaty and Beijing. When London bid for the 2012 Summer Games there were seven applicant cities reduced to five candidate cities in probably the best contest the IOC ever had. The reduction in candidate cities forms part of the agenda 2020 effort. This process, instigated by President Thomas Bach, has resulted in the very wide consultation exercise involving all sports stakeholders and many from the outside public." JOURNALIST TYPING (SOUNDBITE) (English) CRAIG REEDIE, INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE VICE-PRESIDENT, SAYING: "The non-organising committee budget and associated works are a result of the Games being used as a catalyst to improve or develop the host city. We seem to be constantly criticised for allowing Sochi to spend a figure of 51 billion US dollars. Now I don't know where that figure came from, but I can assure you that at no time did the IOC invite Sochi or Russia to make that scale of investment, an investment we should remember that will last for many many years and should not be accounted for over a period of 30 days of Olympic and Paralympic sport." CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE) (English) CRAIG REEDIE, INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE VICE-PRESIDENT, SAYING: "Reality is that the value of the prize is so enormous that the cost of bidding can be modest in comparison, if the London Games proved anything they surely proved that. "So I appreciate that bidding for Olympic Games is at the high end of the spectrum but benefits from a successful bid can be enormous." CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE) (English) ALEXANDER KOCH, FIFA CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER, SAYING: "It needs to be more defined. In what way should it be published? I think there should be as much transparency as possible but there are limits to it. If you are doing a report and you do interviews with people and you promise them that their names won't be disclosed, what they are saying, then you can't turn around five minutes later and say Mister X,Y,Z said this. But I personally think that everybody has the interest of knowing what the outcome is to the extent possible it should be published and that's what Mr. Eckhart (FIFA ethics judge) said." CONFERENCE
  • Embargoed: 12th November 2014 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAD58902AFVLQU6BZZFMOGA9UZF
  • Story Text: International Olympic Committee Vice-President Craig Reedie said on Tuesday (October 28) that the presidents of the athletic organisation and FIFA had agreed that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will not clash with the Winter Olympics.
    Earlier this month FIFA revived the possibility of staging the 2022 World Cup in January and February after president Sepp Blatter had previously ruled out the idea last year.
    Speaking at a conference in London, Reedie said that Blatter and his IOC counterpart Thomas Bach had an agreement that the two events would not overlap.
    "There's a general agreement between the presidents of the two organisations that there will not be a clash," he said.
    "That would tend to indicate that the IOC would prefer to see the World Cup before Christmas rather than after Christmas. There is clearly an issue with the European football associations and I'm not sure how FIFA are going to resolve that, but certainly we would not like to have a clash between the Winter Games which is a huge event in its own right as you can see from Sochi, and as you could see from the coverage of Sochi, and the World Cup, which is a huge event in its own right, it doesn't make any sense to have these two big events clashing. We think there is an arrangement in place to avoid that."
    Qatar was originally awarded the World Cup on the widely-held understanding that it would be staged in the summer, but although officials have insisted that a summer World Cup is viable thanks to cooling technologies being developed for stadiums, training areas and fan zones, they say they have no problems in moving it to any time of the year according to the wishes of the international football community.
    The host of the 2022 Games will be decided in July, with Almaty in Kazakhstan and Beijing in China the only remaining candidates after Oslo was the latest city to withdraw due to a lack of support for what is seen by many as a costly bidding process.
    "The reduction in candidate cities forms part of the agenda 2020 effort. This process, instigated by Presdent Thomas Bach, has resulted in the very wide consultation exercise involving all sports stakeholders and many from the outside public," Reedie said before going on to point out the benefits that hosting the Games can bring.
    "The non-organising committee budget and associated works are a result of the Games being used as a catalyst to improve or develop the host city.
    "We seem to be constantly criticised for allowing Sochi to spend a figure of 51 billion US dollars. Now I don't know where that figure came from, but I can assure you that at no time did the IOC invite Sochi or Russia to make that scale of investment, an investment we should remember that will last for many many years and should not be accounted for over a period of 30 days of Olympic and Paralympic sport.
    "Reality is that the value of the prize is so enormous that the cost of bidding can be modest in comparison, if the London Games proved anything they surely proved that.
    "So I appreciate that bidding for Olympic Games is at the high end of the spectrum but benefits from a successful bid can be enormous."
    Also at the conference was FIFA corporate communications manager Alexander Koch, who defended the decision by FIFA ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckhart not to make public the findings of US attorney Michael Garcia's investigation into the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
    "In what way should it be published? I think there should be as much transparency as possible but there are limits to it," he said.
    "If you are doing a report and you do interviews with people and you promise them that their names won't be disclosed, what they are saying, then you can't turn around five minutes later and say Mister X,Y,Z said this. But I personally think that everybody has the interest of knowing what the outcome is to the extent possible it should be published and that's what Mr Eckhart said."

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