Newsletter B10/n.13. Barcelona 2010 displays its charms to European Athletics in Lausanne

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1 1 Barcelona 2010 displays its charms to European Athletics in Lausanne José María Odriozola, President of B10 with Sebastian Coe, Chairman of London 2012 and Monica Barra José María Odriozola, Barcelona 2010 Organising Committee President, and Monica Barra, B10 General Coordinator, presented the Championships project to the European Athletics Congress that took place in Lausanne in mid April. The Championships have been designed with a mixture of the traditional programme of Olympic events in the stadium and five road races (two marathons and three walking events) around the city centre, in order for people to get completely involved in the event. The 20-minute presentation was followed with great interest by the whole assembly who, in the end, congratulated the two speakers. Barcelona 2010 also shared the platform with the London Olympic Games, as Sebastian Coe, London 2012 Chairman, presented the latest developments in the 2012 Olympics project. Odriozola, proud of the B10 presentation to European Athletics leaders and the Congress, said that he was very pleased about the response from all the colleagues from other federations who have congratulated us for the work done so far and they have promised us all their help in order to attract athletics fans from all over Europe to Barcelona next summer.

2 The Congress was attended by 226 delegates representing 48 national federations. European Athletics President, Hansjörg Wirz, informed the participants about the changes that the European federation is undergoing to adapt athletics to current requirements and to viewer s needs. These changes will become a reality during the European Team Championships that will take place in Leiria, Portugal this year. 2 IMAGINA to direct the Opening Ceremony to show that another world is possible The proposal presented by the event management from IMAGINA has won the public tender to develop and direct the Barcelona 2010 Opening and Closing ceremonies. The Opening ceremony will take place in the Reina María Cristina Avenue on 26 July and the Closing ceremony will be held immediately after the last finals, inside the stadium on 1 August IMAGINA s creation will use the Magic Fountains as the main stage during the Opening ceremony, which will last a little over two hours. The artistic component is one of the proposal s strong points, as it counts on Hansel Cereza in artistic direction, Nacho Cano in musical composition and interpretation, Jaume de Laiguana in image, and Deambulants in vertical dance and acrobatics. The authors aim to show, using the values of athletics, that another world is possible. The ceremony will have a magic component to show that, as their project says, everything is possible if we put our minds to it. IMAGINA is a collaboration between two leading communication groups in Spain, MEDIAPRO and Globomedia. They are European leaders in audiovisual content and they are the only company that integrates content with production and distribution.

3 The Barcelona Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium track will be identical to that used in Beijing MONDO will install the synthetic material in the track where athletes will compete during the European Athletics Championships Barcelona The new track, which will be blue in colour, will be laid in spring The bends, where the field events will take place will be ready by this coming summer and will be available for the Meeting Ciutat de Barcelona as well as the Spanish Championships The agreement between the famous multinational specialist manufacturer of sports equipment and flooring and B:SM, the company that manages the Barcelona Olympic Stadium, reveals that the Montjuïc stadium will be the first MONDO blue track in the world and will be the second track with the same characteristics as the Beijing Olympic Stadium. The Mondotrack FTX is a state-of-the-art track regarded as the fastest in the world after the men s 100, 200 and 4x100m records were smashed during the Beijing Olympic Games by Jamaican athletes such as Usain Bolt. The renewed surface will measure 16,000 square metres. The existing synthetic material will not be replaced, but a new coat will be laid on top of the old one. MONDO will also replace the synthetic track in the Mar Bella and Pau Negre stadiums. The Mar Bella stadium will be the athletes main training venue during Barcelona 2010, as it is close to the sea-front hotels where athletes will be accommodated. While the Pau Negre stadium will be the warm-up facility for runners and jumpers.

4 4 16,000 euros is the amount obtained by the French pole vaulter Romain Mesnil after appearing nude in the streets of Paris in the search of a sponsor. He convinced OVH (On vous héberge), a web hosting company 1,700 volunteers have signed up to collaborate with B10 during the first six months of the recruitment campaign 2:05:56 is Samuel Wanjiru s career average of four races after his victory in 2009 London Marathon. It s the best ever and he advances Gebreselassie in a second 12 athletes ran under 2:10.00 in the Paris Marathon: this had never been seen before. 28,261 runners participated in the Paris Marathon Barni grabs the attention of Catalan sportsmen and women to promote B10 The B10 Marketing department promotional campaign, based on the B10 mascot has received its first results. Barni s image is recognised in most sporting. circles in Barcelona, and Championships awareness in the streets begins to be visible. During the last few weeks, Barni went to the FC Barcelona skating rink to support the members of the Spanish ice-hockey team who were going to participate in the World Championships. He also visited the hard-working firemen who participated in the Firemen s popular race. Every weekend he has attended these races that have taken place in Catalonia, and he also was present in the prestigious commercial area in the Barcelona Open Banco Sabadell, previously known as Trofeo Conde de Godó, which is taking place in the RCT Barcelona every year. Thanks to Barni, other communication tools (games, leaflets, merchandising etc.) and being present in all sporting events, citizens are following the Championships organisation process with great interest. There are 15 months left, and many and well directed steps have been taken until now. 111 camera positions is the number foreseen by TVE, the host broadcaster, in its production plan for the Barcelona 2010 events (not counting the Opening Ceremony) Barni with Rafa Nadal, World number one tennis player

5 Newsletter B10/ n July - 1 August From top to bottom clockwise, Barni with the winners of La Cursa dels Bombers, with some players of the ice hockey national team, at the Barcelona City Council Promotional stand in the Tennis Open Conde de Godó and finally with Ali Belal Mansoor and Natalia Rodríguez winners of La Milla de la Sagrada Familia road event The cranes in the Olympic Stadium are working thoroughly The old scoreboard in the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium in Montjuïc has almost been dismantled. The cranes, installed by the company Odeco, have only needed less than three weeks to extract, piece by piece, the enormous screen that will be replaced by a state-of-the-art one. These have been the first works carried out in the stadium, which will finish in the spring of The new video scoreboard will be usable before the Football League ends (the last matches will take place on 31 May) and, naturally, it will be ready for the two test events this summer:

6 the International Athletics Meeting Ciutat de Barcelona on 25 July, and the Spanish Championships on 1 and 2 August. 6 At the same time as the new video scoreboard installation, the organisation is working to install the optic cable which can feed the four screens that the stadium will have for future events: two in the south stand, the new one and the alphanumeric scoreboard that will be retained, and two in the north stand. These last two will be rented for the Championships. The works are making progress in the video and technical control booths, the stadium s sound system installation, infirmary and auxiliary services, press areas, anti-doping control and public services. The works that might affect the RDC Espanyol - the football team that regularly uses the premises and will finish the League season in Montjuïc before moving to their new stadium in Cornellà - have been left for the end. The departure of Espanyol from the stadium has generated interest about the Lluís Companys Stadium. Carles Martí, Barcelona City Council Deputy Mayor, hopes that the stadium will be a place with public services, and that it will not remain empty but will be put at the city s service. The Barcelona City Council will set new terms for the stadium s use in order to combine sports events with big shows and other activities after Barcelona 2010 has taken place. As Martí says, we will go from a model based on having a resident team with priority over the stadium, to diversifying the area so that it can be used by different city clubs and organisations as well as for festivals and concerts.

7 Can Bayer leave Lewis behind him in Barcelona? 7 Sebastian Bayer has been getting to grips with Spanish customs during his three week training stint in the Andalusian town of Ayamonte during April and it's knowledge that he expects will be valuable next year at the European Athletics Championships Barcelona I have the World Championships this summer in Berlin, and that's very important as it is on my home soil and there will be high expectations from me. After that, the European Athletics Championships next year will obviously be the focus of my 2010 season, said the 22-year-old German long jumper. Bayer became the sensation of this winter's indoor season after his European Indoor record of 8.71m. As any ardent athletics fan will know, he entered the record books with a phenomenal gold-medal winning performance at the 2009 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Torino. He produced the second best indoor mark in history, with only the American legend and four-time Olympic champion Carl Lewis ahead of him in the rankings. By coincidence, it will also be Lewis who Bayer will have as one of his targets next summer. The Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium long jump record has stood at 8.68m since Lewis leapt that distance at the 1992 Olympics en-route to his third gold medal at the Games but Bayer could make that mark a footnote in athletics history. Now the challenge for me is to prove that I can jump well outdoors although it will be difficult for me to do that sort of distance this season. I want to be jumping over eight metres consistently and to be jumping around 8.30m or better at the World Championships in Berlin. One point Bayer likes to make that suggests he will continue to impress is that, before his remarkable jump, he had already improved his personal best to 8.29m in Torino and had clinched victory there. My jump of 8.29m in the first round was a German indoor record and yet it didn't feel like a particularly good jump to me. I was always in the lead so passed my next three jumps before making a foul with my fifth attempt but I had won when it came to my last jump and it was the perfect moment. I felt very excited at having won the gold medal and the German national anthem was also playing for Ariane Friedrich's victory in the women's high jump as I prepared to jump.

8 I asked my coach, 'What shall I do?' He said, 'all or nothing'. I turned to my fellow German Nils Winter (who won the silver medal) and asked him what the European Indoor record was. I actually didn't know and when he told me it was 8.56m (which had stood to Spain's Yago Lamela since 1999), I thought that was probably out of my reach, maybe 8.40m was possible. 8 One man who has no doubts about Bayer's chances of following up his European Indoor title with one outdoors next year is the most successful long jumper in the history of the European Athletics Championships, Russia's Igor Ter- Ovanesyan. Ter-Ovanesyan won three gold medals and two silvers in the five Championships between 1958 and He was the first European to jump over eight metres, the first of his seven European records, and he also set two world records before becoming a renowned coach. "Bayer's leap was really like a revelation for me. I would even compare it with Bob Beamon's famous world jump at the 1968 Olympics! commented Ter-Ovanesyan recently. It was amazing to watch and, knowing how people think these days, I am 100 per cent sure that the secret of his phenomenal jump has nothing to do with taking any forbidden substances. He looks to have found something extra in his technique. His progress is obviously not only a bit frightening, but also very interesting to study, he added. IN MAY Day 1: One year anniversary of the B10 Newsletter Day 5: Signature of the agreement with Nacex, the new B10 s official courier service supplier