Oon Jin Teik, one of Tuesday 9 March’s special guest speakers. “Our ambition is to turn this country into a place where sport is a way of life.” The country being referred to is Singapore, and the person speaking is Oon Jin Teik, President of the Singapore Sports Council, a body that works under the auspices of the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports in Singapore. This is a man who knows what he is talking about - having represented his nation at swimming at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984, and as a member of the organising committee of the first-ever Youth Olympic Games, which took place this summer in Singapore, he is one of the island city-state’s most influential sporting figures. He is due to speak as part of the themed debate “Can sport meet the new demands of cities?”, a problem that the 46-year-old official encounters on a daily basis, as an inhabitant of a metropolis that boasts 4 million people, constituting one of the most densely-populated areas in the world (6,751 inhabitants per km²).

Barcelona, 2022 Winter Olympics candidate. On Wednesday 13 January, Jordi Hereu, Mayor of Barcelona, announced that the Catalan capital intended to “live the Olympic dream once again”. In real terms, his statement meant that Barcelona was planning to submit a bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. The bid is based on a partnership with the ski resorts located in the Catalan Pyrenees, north of Barcelona. The opening and closing ceremonies as well as the indoor events (figure skating, speed skating, curling and ice hockey) would take place within the city itself, whereas the alpine and Nordic skiing events are earmarked for resorts such as La Molina, near Puigcerdà, which has previously organised Women’s World Cup events in alpine skiing. According to Barcelona’s Mayor, the bid offers the advantage of “strengthening the Euroregion of Southern Europe”. Jordi Hereu revealed that he had been working on the idea for quite some time, but that he had not wished to make it public until now, so as not to disrupt the Madrid bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, which eventually proved unsuccessful. As it stands, the Spanish Olympic Committee is due to select which city will be Spain’s representative for the 2022 Games in June 2013, as Zaragoza-Jaca have also put themselves forward. During the course of 2014, the International Olympic Committee will officially announce the candidate cities, with the final selection of the host city scheduled to take place in October 2015 (other bids are expected from New Zealand, Romania and other countries). If Barcelona was chosen, it could potentially become the first city to organise the Winter Games after having already played host to the summer equivalent. It is possible that this could change, however, when, on July 2011 in Durban, the IOC announces the winning bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics. There are three candidates battling it out, Annecy (France), Pyeongchang (South Korea) and Munich (Germany), with the Bavarian capital having already welcomed the Summer Olympics back in 1972. Even in the event of a successful Munich bid, Barcelona could still break new ground by becoming the first coastal town to organise the Winter Games.

50 projects, from which the winners of the Global Sports Forum Trophies 2010 will emerge. The 50 projects have been divided up into eight categories, representing the eight themes of the Global Sports Forum: Sport and education, Sport business, Philanthropy and cooperation through sports, Sport and geopolitics, Major sporting events, Sport in the city, Sport, culture and creativity, plus Sport and health. They are initiatives that act as examples of the multifaceted role of sport. The criteria on which they will be judged are innovation, social impact and durability, as well as whether or not they have a challenging identity. A group of experts from among the 2009 speakers examined the projects and preselected 24 (3 by category). On 15 February, the eight winning entries (one per category) will be announced. Finally, during the official dinner on 9 March, the coveted Global Sports Forum Trophies 2010 will be presented to the teams behind the winning programmes. If you would like to get an idea of the incredible depth and variety of the proposed initiatives, or put yourself in the shoes of one of the members of the judging panel, please click on the following link:

http://globalsportsforum.org/index.aspx?news=1140.

There you will find comprehensive details (presentation of the project, its objectives and what was achieved) relating to each entry, as well as a series of links enabling you to "read more", should you so wish.