FISU and EUSA: WAKO kickboxing wants to be University SPORT

 http://www.wakoeurope.com/news/21-news-front-page/36-visit-to-eusa

WAKO EUROPE REPRESENTATIVES VISITING EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY SPORT EUSA

WAKO EUROPE AS A PART OF EUSA

WAKO Europe board members Miss Aleksandra Nedelkovska and Mr. Bojan Kolev, who is also a member of WAKO Europe Education and students committee, together with Mr. Vladimir Sitar, chairman of WAKO Europe Education and students committee, have visited European Association Of University Sport (EUSA). Visit was about including kickboxing in a big family of European University Sport Association which would be a great step forward for WAKO EUROPE and kickboxing.

              In Ljubljana, capitol of Slovenia on February 21st, we had constructive meeting with the president of EUSA, Mr. Adam Roczek. On the meeting also were present Mr. Matjaz Pechovnik, secretary and Mr. Patrik Perosa , sport manager of EUSA.

    EUSA has 45 country members from Europe and this year the EUSA Championship will be in Rotterdam, Holland, including 19 sports.   

      On the meeting, which started very well, we discussed about including kickboxing  in a  big family of University sport. We explained everything about championships organized by WAKO IF and WAKO Europe and big popularity of our sport around the world. We introduce WAKO as affiliate from GAISF  and Sport Accord. Also, kickboxing is a sport which includes students in WAKO championships. For example, Mr. Kolev expressed his experience in Bulgaria where he has organized student championships   7 years in a row. That impressed representatives from   EUSA.  As a Balkan president, he suggested that Balkan championship this year should be separated from University championship. That was accepted from EUSA. President of EUSA was invited to be a part of this championships and he accepted.  

That was one plus more for WAKO Europe and for us as, representatives of WAKO Europe on this meeting.

      The president of EUSA, Mr.Roczek has introduced us with the terms that we must fulfill so WAKO Europe can be included  in EUSA and  also he gave us open hand for cooperation.   

           Country Members of Wako Europe already fulfill their activities and terms so that kick boxing will be a part of University sport as soon as possible.

      WAKO Europe must send the official request letter to be a member of EUSA.

  After that, EUSA office will send conditions about.

  In April this year EUSA will have General assembly and they will discuss  about us.

  This meeting finished very well for both sides.

Aleksandra Nedelkovska, WAKO Europe board member

Picture 1. EUSA  President, secretary  General and  sport menager  with WAKO Europe representatives.

web: www.eusa.eu

http://www.eusa.eu/en/news.htm&showNews=2230&sso=done

A special meeting was also held with the representatives of the European kickboxing Federation (WAKO Europe) which is a Continental Division of the World Association of Kickboxing Organisations (WAKO). Mrs Aleksandra Nedelkovska (MKD), Boyan Kolev (BUL) and Vladimir Sitar (SLO) expressed interest in EUSA and its sports programme, discussing potential cooperation in the future.

The outcomes of the working meetings will be presented at the EUSA Executive Committee meeting in April.

http://www.wakoeurope.com/events/event-announcement/78-russia-ufa-2014

http://www.wakoweb.com/en/event/1st-wako-international-university-kickboxing-championship/01574997-1b7b-471c-8e0e-62e11d2765dc

Official Invitation
http://www.wakoweb.com/en/attachment/55ee935a-6310-424b-8185-eec8ce652f78/

Location: Ufa, RussiaContact: Registration (sportarts@mail.ru)

1st WAKO International University Kickboxing 

Championship

1st WAKO International University Kickboxing Championship will take place in Ufa, Russia, from 12th to 17th July, 2014.

For the program and all necessary details please read carefully the enclosed invitation!

ATTENTIONAccording to WAKO rules&regulations the eligibility for the participation is reserved to WAKO national Federation/Association members.

Attachments

• Official Invitation

MATCH FIXING: Scientific report confirms the astonishing scale of sports betting fraud and encourages the establishment of an international integrity platform

Source: Sportaccord
http://www.sportaccord.com/en/news/scientific-report-confirms-the-astonishing-scale-of-sports-betting-fraud-and-encourages-the-establishment-of-an-international-integrity-platform-0-1762

PRESENTED YESTERDAY IN PARIS THE RESULTS OF A TWO YEARS RESEARCH PROJECT ON ETHICS AND SECURITY IN SPORT. THE MAIN FOCUS OF THE STUDY IS THE MANIPULATION OF SPORTS COMPETITIONS AND THE REVIEW OF THE MEASURES TO BE TAKEN TO TACKLE THIS SCOURGE. THE CONFERENCE GATHERED OVER 300 PARTICIPANTS IN THE PRESTIGIOUS AMPHITHEATRE OF THE SORBONNE UNIVERSITY, THE ONE WHERE 120 YEARS AGO PIERRE DE COUBERTIN CHAIRED THE CONGRESS TO ESTABLISH THE MODERN OLYMPIC GAMES.

The findings of the scientific report include startling figures on the scale and scope of the sport-betting market, which is identified as the primary purpose for match-fixing as it has been transformed in the last 15 years into a multi-billion dollar industry.  

Organised crime is estimated to launder over

US$140 billion annually through sport betting

and 80% of global sport betting to be illegal. 

 

The report states that the most manipulated competitions are at a national level but highlights that the ‘fixing’ of competition and betting is instigated at a transnational level. Football and cricket prove to be the most targeted sports by criminals.

SportAccord participated to the research notably by conducting a survey last year within its members to question their current measures and policies. By taking part in one of the afternoon’s panels, the aim was to once again put an emphasis on the importance, from the sports movement perspective, of prevention and education. The report notes that 60% of the initiatives identified in that field were launched in the last 18 months, with 40% developed in Europe mainly in football, tennis, cricket and rugby.

SportAccord Integrity Officer discusses the importance of education within the sports organisation's panel

As part of its findings, the Sorbonne-ICSS Report provides Guiding Principles for governments, sports organisations, betting regulators and operators to adopt in order to combat match-fixing and illegal betting. These recommendations include: creating a sports betting tax to finance investigations into match-fixing and illegal-betting, determination of an integrity risk assessment and management system for sports organisations and prohibiting players, coaches and administrators from betting on competitions and matches within their sport. It also recommends that sports betting operators cooperate with sports bodies through, for example, enhanced monitoring systems and the exchange of intelligence in cases of breaches of sports regulations or national legislation.

This extensive and comprehensive two-year project provides a clear call to action and notably encourages the creation of a coordinated international integrity platform. SportAccord looks forward to following up on this unique work and in particular to consider the way for SISO (Sports Integrity Standards Organisation) to be a proactive stakeholder of such an international integrity platform.

• Access HERE the Executive Summary of the Sorbonne-ICSS Report ‘Protecting the Integrity of Sport Competition: The Last Bet for Modern Sport’.
• Access HERE the Sorbonne-ICSS Guiding Principles for Protecting the Integrity of Sport Competition. 

- See more at: http://www.sportaccord.com/en/news/scientific-report-confirms-the-astonishing-scale-of-sports-betting-fraud-and-encourages-the-establishment-of-an-international-integrity-platform-0-17629#sthash.6hKqv2MN.dpuf

THE DAY OF FRANCOPHONE MOVEMENT: Ломаченко (Lomachenko) you are REAL winner

Lomachenko was much better. Can Ukraine learn something of this USA bellow the waist relations?

IOC: Savate to olympics?

Source: http://www.francsjeux.com/la-francophonie

http://www.francsjeux.com/interview-oif/2014/02/03/georgy-fernante-savate-boxe-francaise-france/8465

and

http://www.francsjeux.com/2014/02/08/je-comprends-mieux-le-budget-des-jeux-de-sotchi/8615

IOC: French must stop showing "arrogance" if Paris bid for 2024 Olympics is not to fail again, warns Killy

PAPA DON'T PREACH ...

Source: http://www.insidethegames.biz/olympics/summer-olympics/2024/1016572-french-must-stop-showing-arrogance-if-paris-bid-for-2024-olympics-is-not-to-fail-again-warns-killy

By Duncan Mackay

October 20 - If Paris bids for the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics then they need to show "humility, of listening and of perseverance", instead of being arrogant, they have been warned by Jean-Claude Killy. 

Killy is France's most senior member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and claimed that the country needs a fresh approach if it is to finally succeed after five consecutive unsuccessful bids.

Three of these have come from Paris.

They were for 1992 which were awarded to Barcelona, 2008 to Beijing and 2012 to London when the French capital was the overwhelming favourite only to be beaten in one of the biggest upsets in Olympic bidding history.

This was then followed by a bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympics from Annecy, when they polled only seven votes as the Games were awarded to South Korea's Pyeongchang, the second lowest total in recent history.

Lille had also bid for the 2004 Olympics but were not even chosen as a candidate city for a Games awarded to Athens. 

The last successful French Olympic bid came from Albertville, who were awarded the 1992 Winter Games.

A bid from Paris for 2024 is widely expected, especially as it would mark the centenary of the 1924 Games which were held there and immortalised in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire. 

Paris lost its bid to host the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics to rivals London, despite being the favourite for most of the campaign

But Killy, a former skier who won three gold medals at Grenoble in 1968, has cautioned that Paris needs to adopt a new attitude if it is to come out in front of what is expected to be the most competitive bid campaign since 2012 which also featured Madrid, Moscow and New York.

"We must stop putting ourselves forward as something we're not," Killy told French newspaperJournal du Dimanche in an interview published today. .

"We can't turn up once every ten years and tell the whole world what the Olympic Movement is about, that shows arrogance, and then go and repeat that ten years later."

Killy, who gave his lukewarm support to Annecy's bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics, gave Paris a word of advice should they emerge as 2024 host city candidates.

"They should create a Team France obviously backed by the Mayor [of Paris]," said Killy, who is currently head of the IOC Coordination Commission for Sochi 2014. 

"It also helps to pay attention to the competition. 

"The Americans will be hard to beat.

"France should adopt a position of humility, of listening and of perseverance."

Paris last hosted the Olympics in 1924 but Jean-Claude Killy warned that they will not be awarded the 2024 Games out of sentiment

If Paris pinned its hopes of being awarded the Games because it is the centenary of 1924, then it is doomed to fail, Killy warned.

"Never [should they adopt this strategy], looking at its scope and responsibilities a romantic IOC no longer exists," he said.

But, even if Paris does bid, then Killy does not wish to be part of its campaign.

"Out of the question, or only a helping hand," he said.

Contact the writer of this story at duncan.mackay@insidethegames.biz

IOC President Bach meets Hollande to discuss potential Paris 2024 Olympic bid

Saturday, 30 November 2013

Source: http://www.insidethegames.biz/olympics/summer-olympics/2024/1017225-ioc-president-bach-meets-hollande-to-discuss-potential-paris-2024-olympic-bid

By Emily Goddard

November 30 - International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach today met French President François Hollande to discuss a potential bid from Paris for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympics.

The pair, along with French IOC members Guy Drut and Tony Estanguet and IOC director general Christophe De Kepper, met in the French capital to also talk about the expectations for French athletes at the upcoming Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, France's commitment to the fight against doping and illegal betting in sport and general sports development in the country.

On the eve of the meeting, Bach - who is in the city to attend the International Fencing Federation (FIE) Centennial Gala Dinner - spoke favourably about a bid from Paris to host either the 2024 or 2028 Games, and suggested that France should not be cautious about bidding again after five consecutive unsuccessful attempts.

France last hosted the Summer Olympics in 1924, meaning that 2024 will mark the centenary of those Games ©Getty Images
"The enthusiasm of the French people for sport is obvious...it would be a very, very strong candidate," he told France 3 television.

"It's a sports competition, you can't wait until you're the only bidder.

"That's never going to happen.

"A bid can contribute to development, not only sports development but also social development in a country and in a city.

"You have to go for it, to be united, to fight for it."

Although the last successful French Olympic bid came from Albertville, which was awarded the 1992 Winter Games, the country last hosted the Summer Olympics in 1924, meaning that 2024 will mark the centenary of those Games.

While in France, Bach yesterday met with Abdou Diouf, secretary general of the International Organisation of La Francophonie, to discuss a potential cooperation for next year's International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, being jointly organised by the IOC and the United Nations.

Contact the writer of this story at emily.goddard@insidethegames.biz


Related storiesOctober 2013: David Owen - Why the Olympic Movement needs a Paris 2024 bid
October 2013: French must stop showing "arrogance" if Paris bid for 2024 Olympics is not to fail again, warns Killy
November 2012: Exclusive - Many factors will decide if Paris bid for 2024 Olympics says French Olympic Committee President
February 2011: France will keep bidding for the Olympics even if Annecy loses promises Sports Minister

FIAS sambo: Rossiyskaya Gazeta: The ROC will promote Sambo into the Olympic Programme

http://www.sambo-fias.org/en/news/2013/9/25/%C2%ABRossijskaya_gazeta%C2%BB%3A_OKR_budet_prodvigat_sambo_v_olimpijskuyu_programmu

After wrestling was again included into the Olympic Programme, Russia’s representatives in the IOC decided to propose making Sambo an Olympic kind of sports. That was announced to mass media on Thursday by Alexander Zhukov, the Russian Olympic Committee President, a member of IOC.

- The ROC is ready to facilitate in including Sambo into the Olympic Programme. First of all, we’ll put things right in our Sambo Federation. Then we will start preparing a respective application, said Zhukov. Any kind of sports has specific requirements, that’s why all documents should be prepared correctly for such inclusion. The main thing is that we are eager to promote Sambo.

Today at one of the first press conferences after his appointment to the position of the IOC member, Alexander Zhukov told about his thoughts of the appointment:

- I am sure this is as a great step forward for our country. Only three representatives of Russia were among 150 IOC members in the past. Above all things it gives an opportunity to influence the decisions made by the Committee in a greater way. This fact is undoubtedly significant for us.

We also discussed Sochi’s readiness to host the forthcoming Olympic Games. According to the ROC President, coastal and mountain sports clusters are ready to host sportsmen. Besides, all sports objects have been already tested. At present time specialists are putting the finishing touches. They do planting and the territory improvement. The city transport infrastructure and hotels have not been prepared in full, as well as the territory of the resort city has not been all over improved. But, in Zhukov’s opinion, these things are not so important because a lot of work has already been done.

- Moreover I would like to emphasize the barrier-free environment in Sochi. No city or town in Russia has such infrastructure as Sochi does, said Alexander Zhukov. – Now all sports facilities being under construction, especially those intended for international competitions, will take Olympic Sochi’s experience into account. Besides, it’s good that all these objects will function in the resort city after finishing of the Olympic Games.

The ROC President expressed his opinion on the Russian International Olympic University, which was opened in Sochi not long ago.

- You can not even imagine the extent of demand for this higher educational institution in the world. Unfortunately, there are few professional sports managers nowadays. But this university will prepare such specialists. Besides, skilled professionals will teach there. Many students want to study in this university and that’s a great benefit.

Text: Olga Bondarenko, 
Rossiyskaya Gazeta

WAKO: World combat games 2013 - another change of ambasador of WAKO kickboxing

Not anymore Bill Superfoot "Wallace". But an old friend of Branko Cikatic - IFMA - Muay thai  - from Split (his rival in a recent match 2013) - Don Wilson. the Dragon

Now ladies and gentlemen - we present you IFMA and WAKO cooperator in a sport shoes like savate - french boxing - the ambasador of ambasadors presenting al three sports:
savate, muay thai and kickboxing.

Legend of all legends.

Proud to post this post.

WOMAU: Martial arts exchange seminar - Korea 2013

Like every year.

IOC: AIBA president not successful for an IOC president

http://www.sambo-fias.org/en/news/2013/9/10/Novyj_prezident_MOK_i_olimpijskie_perspektivy_SAMBO

All about serious candidates for an IOC new president ...
And unified boxing will be serious option to an existing professional boxing organisations...

None of the candidates won more than a half of votes on the first ballot, so the second ballot was scheduled, in which Wu Ching-Kuo, President of the International Amateur Boxing Association, did not took part, because he dropped out according to the results of the first ballot. After the second ballot Rogge announced that the IOC members elected the new President of the Committee – German Thomas Bach.

BOXING: Am I the only person unhappy about women boxing?

ONE YEAR BEFORE...

Catholic Herald
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2012/08/27/am-i-the-last-person-opposed-to-women-boxing/

Sports like wrestling and boxing are training women to be as aggressive as men

By Francis Phillips on Monday, 27 August 2012

I know this question is the most politically incorrect one could raise in these exultant, post-Olympic days and that I’ll be met with shouts of derision or sheer disbelief, but I’ll ask it anyway: should women engage in the sport of boxing? When I saw the photographs of Olympians Katie Taylor and Nicola Adams fighting in the ring I felt aghast – and I still feel that way. It might seem a victory in the on-going feminist struggle for women’s complete equality with men, but it strikes me as a hollow victory; a blow against the nature of womankind; indeed, a step backwards for civilisation.

I had better state here that I have absolutely nothing against the two young women who won their boxing gold medals. I understand that Katie Taylor, aged 26, who won Ireland’s first gold medal as a lightweight, and who already has won four world and five European titles, is an evangelical Christian who regularly attends a Pentecostal church and who prays before her fights. In almost any other sport she would make an excellent role model. She is now wondering whether to turn professional. Nicola Adams, aged 29 and from Leeds, a flyweight, who has struggled for years to get sponsorship, sounds equally talented, dedicated, modest and charming. She has commented that “It’s great to think girls might take up the sport because of me. It’s a great sport and it’s an honour that people are looking up to me in that way.”

Scouring the newspapers for a smidgeon of support for my own position, I have not been able to find one dissenting voice in the accolades Katie and Nicola have been receiving. Jonathan McEvoy in The Mail On-Line enthuses, “You have to remind yourself the two slight figures in the ring, hidden behind their head guards, are not blokes.” He reflects, “At the acute risk of being called a chauvinist, I had…some misgivings. I am not sure my concerns amounted to a reasoned objection. If women want to box, who are we men, or indeed their fellow women, to say they shouldn’t? Nor is it a logical misgiving when you consider that women take part in rugby, taekwondo and wrestling. They can all be more injurious than amateur boxing with its protective gear…” Watching Nicola Adams in the ring he is quite won over: she “even had this sceptic’s support, 100%.”

Amir Khan, the 2004 Olympic boxing silver medallist, is on record as having once said, “Deep down I think women shouldn’t fight. When you get hit it hurts. It can be very painful”. It appears he has now changed his mind. He wants to promote Nicola Adams, declaring “I’m happy to take Nicola under my wing. I will make her a world champion.” Sir Clive Woodward of the British Olympic Association is also a champion of women’s boxing, stating exultantly that “We have arrived at true equality.”

I am sorry to sound a curmudgeon in all this. I am just wondering if everyone is too punch-drunk at the sight of our gleaming gold medal table to ask if it is appropriate for women to punch each other hard on the head and face in several bouts, with a view to knocking each other down (or out?) Women are not the same as men so why do we have this need to prove ourselves “equal” to them in every way? The sexes are different in personality and character as well as in physique; they are complementary, not interchangeable. Men are physically stronger, more aggressive; they are the sex who traditionally went into battle to protect the hearth and home. Women were supposedly the gentler sex in the best sense so it was thought, with gifts of compassion, caring, sympathy and intuition; the sex that civilised men by creating a home for them and their children (or in these days, creating a kinder, more humane atmosphere in the office). Why is it “chauvinistic” to say this, or to feel you have to apologise for acknowledging, as Jonathan McEvoy has admitted, that you have “misgivings”? Why are Amir Khan’s instincts “deep down” now seen as wrong?

The age of women’s rights began with a noble cause: the right to vote. But this endless battle for literal “equality” has ended by making fools of us all. Personally, I think we are all pretending we enjoy watching women, looking at a distance “like blokes” in their protective head guards, attacking other women in a deliberately aggressive, close contact sport that has been traditionally and rightly a male preserve. Either people are afraid to say the sight makes them uneasy or everyone has become more decadent in their tastes. For the record, and as McEvoy raised it, I also don’t like the thought of women doing taekwondo, wrestling or rugby, other masculine-type contact sports. It’s not that they are “unladylike”, a word with class connotations of “gentility”. It’s that they are unwomanly in its deepest sense. They are training women to be aggressive – and men are already aggressive enough.

I am not trying to stereotype women as shrinking violets. Catholics have the person of Our Lady as a model and guide. She was amazingly strong, steadfast and courageous – but also intrinsically feminine, not a pagan warrior queen. If we want women to behave like the fabled Amazons we are embracing neo-paganism. Judaeo-Christianity once gave us a more truly civilised sense of the particular genius of women – and it did not include participating in essentially male sports. Perhaps in countries where a Catholic culture is still alive or in a faith where women can identify with strong role models like Edith Stein or Blessed Gianna Molla, there is less of a craving to imitate men?

I think I’ll need protective head gear for saying all this.

AIBA boxing: Katie Taylor's claims that women's boxing is going backwards

http://www.independent.ie/sport/aiba-deny-katie-taylors-claims-that-womens-boxing-is-going-backwards-29593923.html

20 September 2013

Boxing's world governing body the AIBA have dismissed claims from Olympic gold medallist Katie Taylor that women's boxing has gone backwards since the London Olympics. 

AIBA said it naturally took Taylor's opinion seriously but pointed to the record number of competitors currently taking part in the second Women's Junior World Boxing Championships in Bulgaria as proof that it was committed to developing the sport. "We all admire Katie and recognise that any frustration she feels stems from her sincere passion for the sport. However we have to disagree that the state of women's boxing is going backwards, far from it in fact," AIBA said in an emailed statement. 

Katie Taylor may abandon a planned defence of her title in 2016 to turn professional after enduring a "terrible year" which she said saw women's boxing take a step backwards. Taylor, a sporting icon in her country, became one of the faces of the London Games last year by playing the lead role in a stunningly successful Olympic debut for women's boxing, one that firmly left the men in the shade. 

Taylor had pledged to remain an amateur in order to box in the Rio de Janeiro Games in three years' time but said today that she was now "flirting" with the pro ranks, laying the blame on boxing's governing body and the sport's Irish authorities. 

"This year has been a terrible year for me," Taylor said "With the European championships (in July), it was just a fight in a little tent in front of 100 people; it was really badly organised... For an Olympic medallist to be fighting in front of that kind of crowd, it was just disappointing. It looked like women's boxing was taking a step backwards." 

The one-time international soccer player, 27, bemoaned the lack of progress made by AIBA (The International Boxing Association) in opening its new professional league to women. The ruling body has established AIBA Professional Boxing (APB) and the World Series of Boxing (WSB) to stop losing boxers to the traditional professional ranks by offering male fighters a living while still allowing them a shot at Olympic gold. 

Taylor's coach, her father Peter, has been trying to get information regarding any plans to extend WSB to female boxers but has not received answers, the lightweight champion said. "This should have been the year when the WSB was set up and we capitalised on what happened last year," Taylor said. "It will be hard to get the motivation if this WSB doesn't go ahead. I feel a bit frustrated stepping backwards, instead of pushing on from last year. “I think she is very close to turning professional because anybody who is a showman wants to be playing in front of a packed house, and you don't get that at amateur fights in Ireland at the moment."

IFMA - WMC: Muay thai and Carlo Di Blasi

Once in FIKBMS and WAKO and now in IFMA or better WMC - World Muay Thai Council. Italian life is much different than classical European once.

5. man from the right side (bottom)

click to enlarge

 

IOC: Is money angry on a simple man from Germany

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/09/12/new-olympics-chief-an-israel-boycotter-thomas-bach/

The history of the Olympics movement has long been marred by a persistent strain of anti-Semitism and bias against Israel. But those who thought the unhappy memories of Berlin in 1936 and Munich in 1972 should not influence our opinion of this behemoth of global sport were just sucker-punched by the election of a new head of the International Olympic Committee. German lawyer Thomas Bach won the presidency of the IOC on a second-ballot vote in Buenos Aires yesterday and began his reign over the sports empire by pledging neutrality in the political disputes that are part and parcel of the Olympics landscape. That notion was undermined by the fact that the first congratulatory phone call Bach received was from Russian President Vladimir Putin who is counting on the IOC head to protect the 2014 Sochi Winter Games from being derailed by protests over Russia’s anti-gay laws. But the pious talk about respecting the Olympic Charter and inclusion is also given the lie by a key fact about Bach’s biography.

Though Bach is being touted as a savvy veteran of Olympic legal tangles including leading anti-doping efforts as well as being a former Gold Medal fencer, the German lawyer’s day job is as chairman of Ghorfa, the Arab-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry. That sounds innocuous enough. But rather than just a straight-forward promoter of trade between Germany and the Arab world, as the Times of Israel reports, according to the American Jewish Committee’s Berlin Ramer Institute, Ghorfa was actually set up in the 1970s in order to facilitate the boycott of Israel:

Ghorfa helps German companies ensure that products meet the import requirements of Arab governments, some of which ban products and services from Israel.

The group continues to issue certificates of German origin for trade with Arab countries. Its earlier practice of certificates verifying that no product parts were produced in Israel stopped in the early 1990s when Germany enacted trade regulations forbidding the use of certificates of origin to enable de facto trade boycotts.

Such a record is hardly unusual in the Olympics hierarchy. Bach, who was a strong supporter of his predecessor’s refusal to hold even a moment of silence to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the slaughter of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics at last year’s London Games had strong support from the Arab world in the IOC election.

The Olympics has consistently refused to commemorate the Munich massacre largely because of the resistance to any mention of the crime on the part of the movement’s Arab and Muslim countries. But Bach’s role in both boycotting Israel and supporting the IOC’s stonewalling of protests about its failure to have even a moment of silence puts him in the grand tradition of his predecessor Avery Brundage, the head of the movement from 1952-1972.

Brundage, the only American ever to head the IOC, helped prevent a boycott of the 1936 Berlin games and has long been suspected of being behind the U.S. team’s decision to keep the two Jewish athletes on the track team—future broadcaster Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller—from competing. Widely accused of anti-Semitism, he closed his career in sports by responding to terrorism in Munich by stating that the “games must go on.”

Since 1972, the Olympics have kept to that motto, ignoring the crime against Israel even while devoting time at its opening ceremonies to other acts of terrorism, such as last year’s commemoration of the attack on London on July 7, 2005.

In that context, Bach’s role in facilitating the efforts of German companies to boycott the State of Israel makes perfect sense. Far from such credentials serving, as they might were the Olympics a movement that was actually dedicated to the principles of equality and justice as it claims to be, to disqualify the German, his discriminatory practices were seen by many IOC committee members as a virtue.

In the past, the Olympics was a noxious mix of extreme nationalism and fake amateurism. But now that it has shed its façade of opposition to professionalism, it is merely a big business that profits from enormous television contracts. Even though most people only care about these events two weeks out of every four years, the Olympics are more popular than ever and any effort to oppose using it to paint despotic regimes in an attractive light are bound to fail since few viewers or advertisers want details about human rights to interfere with their fun or their profits. That was why any effort to shine a light on Putin’s tyranny will be largely ignored just as similar concerns about China collapsed in 2008.

Bach’s election is just one more reason for people of good will, including those, such as myself, who love sports, to ignore the Olympics. Like the United Nations, whose prejudicial practices it mirrors, the reality of the Olympics has little to do with the high ideals it purports to uphold.