Last week the OFI Athletes’ Commission launched the Don’t Scroll By Campaign which had a real call to action, asking everyone to play a role in eliminating hate speech online.
The campaign represented a pledge from Olympic sports organisations to keep online sport free of hate speech.
In order to explain this stance we developed this booklet to highlight why this zero-tolerance approach is important, and directing people to the INAR iReport.ie tool, so that hate incidences can be registered.
The Olympic Federation of Ireland also became a member of INAR (the Irish Network Against Racism) and will support their lobbying for appropriate Hate Crime Legislation.
In Winter Olympic related news, Ciara McCallion was appointed Head of Performance for the Winter Olympics in Beijing 2022, McCallion is a former international athlete from Kildare.
Tokyo Updates
A number of updates have come through for some of the sports, which you will see below, as well as upcoming significant events.
Badminton
The qualification timeline for Badminton was revised this week, where originally the process finished in April, this has now been rescheduled to June 13th. The final date of the reallocation of places will be the 5th of July.
Results from Swiss Open (Bwf Tour Super 300) Olympic qualification event
Sam and Chloe Magee are back in action at the 2021 Swiss open Bwf Tour Super 300 and Olympic qualification event.
The pair made it to the last 16 after beating Callum Hemming and Victoria Williams of England 21-12 21-16, but ultimately were defeated by number 7 seeds Mark Lamsfuss and Isabel Hertrich from Germany (21-17, 21-8).
Nhat Nguyen also competed at the event and out in the last 32 to World number 34 Khosit Phetpradab of Thailand. Nhat won the opening game 21-12 but lost the second 21-17 and the third 21-14.
Moya Ryan and Kate Frost also won their opening round beating Annie Lado and Victoria Williams of England 21-12 9-21 21-17 and moved into the last 16 where they were defeated by World number 14 ranked pairing of Gabriela and Stefani Stoeva from Bulgaria.
Boxing
Last week the world qualifiers for boxing were cancelled, with the spots allocated to induvial continents. This week we learnt that these European qualifiers will take place in Paris from the 4-8 June 2021.
Equestrian
Irish Show Jumping team manager Michael Blake has named the Irish team for the first Nations Cup of the season which takes place in Florida, USA.
Golf
Leona Maguire secured a T16 finish at the Gainbridge LPGA Championship in Florida last weekend resulting in a ten place jump in the World Rolex Rankings to 167th.
Stephanie Meadow (ranked 125th in the Rolex Rankings) and Maguire both compete at the LPGA Drive On Championship this weekend.
Rory McIlroy, Shane Lowry, Padraig Harrington and Graeme McDowell begin the AP Invitational at Bay Hill today on the PGA Tour.
Hockey
This week Hockey Ireland announced the Softco Series which will take place in Queen’s University, Belfast.
Team Ireland will take on Team GB (Olympic Champions) on the 13, 14 and 16 March.
Taekwondo
Jack Woolley returns to the Sofia Open in Bulgaria on Sunday 7th Match where he hopes to return to the podium.
The last World Taekwondo Open tournament was last years edition of the Sofia Open in March where Woolley secured gold. With no less than 26 qualified Tokyo Olympians attending the championships the event should prove to be an exciting and valuable excercise when returning to the ring.
The -58kg fighter travels to Sofia direct from Belgrade where he has just undergone a two week camp with some of the world’s highest ranking athletes.
Beijing updates
This week we held the first of a series of webinars with the winter athletes, where relevant issues for athletes were presented by Chef de Mission for Beijing, Nancy Chillingworth.
Ice Skating
Rising star, Liam O’Brien, will be competing for Team Ireland at the Short Track Worlds in Dordrecht, the Netherlands (more information here). The competition runs from the 5-7 March, and O’Brien will be one of 115 athletes from 29 countries to compete at the event.
Snow Sports
This week Pyeongchang Olympian Thomas Maloney-Westgaard is competing in the Stora Enso FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany. In yesterday’s Men’s 15.0km Interval Start Free, he finished 41st, wearing bib 1!
