Empowering NOCs and IFs to ensure fair competitions at the Olympic Winter Games
Following the positive experience of the capacity-building programme during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the OM Unit PMC implemented it for the first time at the Winter Games, engaging NOCs, IFs and multi-sport event organisers who were present at the Games on the prevention of competition manipulation.
Fifteen sessions were held as part of the very first edition of the OM Unit PMC capacity-building programme during a Winter edition of the Olympic Games. The initiative included theme-specific and language-specific sessions. The main objective of the programme is to further empower the NOC Single Points of Contact present at the Games on the specific topic of preventing competition manipulation.
The programme started in Milan on 9 February with a general PMC activation session. It then continued with a series of theme-specific sessions, including “working as part of a national cooperation”, “best practices in awareness-raising", “how to best activate your national federations, “legal and policy matters in PMC” and “sports betting & intelligence”.
A number of sessions were also organised in the Olympic Village in Cortina, to ensure that NOCs based in that cluster also had the chance to benefit from the programme.
In all, 24 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) were involved, and could find out more about their role in the prevention of competition manipulation. As part of the sessions, NOCs presented relevant activities, experiences and lessons learnt, as the programme was very much based on an exchange of experiences and good practices.
The initial session was also attended by IOC Member and Panama NOC President Damaris Young, who commented: “As part of the session it was good to find out more about the work of other NOCs on this topic, and have concrete discussions on cases and get insights from them.”
Tord Jordet, PMC focal point of Norway NOC, also noted: “It was a great opportunity for me to attend the capacity-building programme in Milan. As part of the programme, I had the chance to present the activities of Norway NOC, but also be inspired based on learnings from the work of other NOCs. I am looking forward to implementing what I have learned.”
The Secretary General and PMC SPOC of Latvia NOC, Raitis Keselis, added: “I particularly appreciated the session ‘Introduction to Sports Betting and Sponsoring Matters’, which was quite insightful and helped me further understand relevant matters that are very timely for my NOC.”
Panam Sports CEO and Secretary General Jimena Saldana, who was also able to be part of the programme, added: “Panam Sports attended two sessions as part of the PMC capacity-building programme in Milan: the first one on ensuring integrity of competitions and organisations, and a second one dedicated to multi-sport event organisers. It is always good to get new insights and information, but also see NOCs, members of Panam Sports, to be actively engaged in strengthening integrity, transparency and good governance across sport in our region.”
Helder Navarro, Colombia NOC SPOC and CdM, commented: “It was the first time for me to attend the PMC capacity-building programme. The sessions in Cortina were very useful, and I managed to understand better some key topics within the wider field of the prevention of the manipulation of competitions. Especially the awareness-raising session gave me lots of ideas that I can implement when it comes to passing relevant messages to the athlete community in my country.”
Beyond the NOCs, some representatives of International Federations, also from summer sports, attended the sessions. Among them, Antonio Cozzolino from World Sailing: “Being a new IF SPOC, attending the sessions in Cortina as part of the PMC capacity-building programme was quite enlightening about the role of IFs in this domain. The session on intelligence and investigations helped me better understand certain processes. Seeing also how different NOCs are working on this matter was quite inspiring.”
A number of external speakers and invitees also took part in the sessions. Nicolas Sayde, Secretary of the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Competitions, underlined: “It is great to see NOCs so engaged and committed in the fight against competition manipulation. They are a key player when it comes to protecting the credibility of sport. It was particularly interesting to hear about their various activities, especially in awareness-raising. This is truly motivating for our future work together.”
This was the second time the OM Unit PMC implemented a capacity-building at the Olympic Games. The first programme was implemented at Paris 2024, with 15 sessions being organised as part of the programme.