Jun 14, 2013
Irish Representation in the 2013 Deaflympics
This July will see the 22nd Deaflympic Summer Games being held in Bulgaria, with Ireland being represented by a team of Football and Badminton players. 22 players were chosen for the Men’s Football panel earlier in the year, and last week, 20 of these players were selected to take a place on the Irish Team. These players hail from a multitude of counties nationwide and from Northern and Southern Ireland. 3 male Badminton players will join the footballers in Bulgaria in the endeavor to bring medals home: Shane Keogh, Johnny Corcoran and Aidan Connor.
On Wed the 24th of April a live international draw was held to group the Football Teams. Ireland has been placed in Group C against: Nigeria, Japan and European favorites Russia, with matches beginning in Pravets on the 25th of July.
The Badminton players on the Irish Team were selected following the 24th National Deaf Badminton Championships on the 24th of March this year. The Deaflympic Badminton tournaments will be held in Sofia, Bulgaria from the 27th of July the 2nd of August.
When asked about the Draw, Manager of the Irish Deaf Men’s Football Team Thomas Coyle Stated: ”It’s a tough draw but a challenge Ireland is looking forward to. It’s a privilege to qualify for the Deaflympics and we are working as hard as possible to give it our best shot.”
The Deaflympics is the second longest running multi-sport event in the world, dating back to Paris in 1924. This competition is aimed towards Deaf and Hard of Hearing participants and gives these elite athletes an opportunity to compete at an international level in a competition free of communication barriers. All signalling throughout the Summer Games will be visual rather than audio, International Sign Language will be used by competitors, managers and supporters alike and the prohibiting of hearing aids and cochlear implants places all athletes on a level playing field.
For more information about the Irish Deaf Team, the 2013 Deaflympics or any other queries, please contact admin@deafsportsireland.com or see www.deafsportsireland.com.
Jun 14, 2013
The second Go for Life Games recently took place in DCU on Saturday 8th June. The Go For Life Games is a celebration of physical activity and approximately 200 older participants comprising of 14 teams, along with their supporters from around the country, participated in a day of various physical activities. The team’s represented older people’s groups from Carlow, Cork, Dublin City, Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown, South County Dublin, Fingal, Kildare, Kilkenny, Meath, South Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow.
The Go For Life Games i
s based on some of the games played by Go For Life right across Ireland. Participants turned their hand to ‘Lobbers’ (a target game adapted from petanque and boules), ‘Flisk’ (adapted from boccia and horseshoe pitching), and ‘Scidils’ (and adaption of ten pin bowling with one skittle).
A team of fourteen older people from Kilkenny became the overall winners of the 2013 Games. Further winners included: Waterford- Lobbers, Kildare- Flisk and South Dublin- Scidils. In addition to these, ten individuals received Spirit of the Games Awards.
Go For Life is the national programme for sport and physical activity for older people over 10 years. It has helped more older people to be more active, more often. 40,000 people take part in Go For Life activities annually.
Go For Life is an Age and Opportunity initiative supported by Irish Sports Council. Teams have been supported locally by their Local Sports Partnerships and the HSE. Age and Opportunity plans to build the Games into one of Ireland’s most significant amateur multi-sporting events.
The underlying philosophy of the games is to promote fair play and encourage participation by older people. Key principle of the Go For Life games is to modify competitive sports into recreational games by adapting rules, playing areas and equipment.
Read More Here (Irish Sports Council)
Read More Here (Age and Opportunity)
Jun 14, 2013
Coca-Cola Thank You Fund Roadshow
You are invited to attend one of the Coca-Cola Thank You Fund Roadshow events taking place in the months of June and July. The Roadshow will be stopping off in Cork, Dublin, Galway and Limerick to host fitness workshops and to spread the word about all the Coca-Cola Thank You Fund has to offer.
Our team will be joined by personal trainer and TV personality Karl Henry, as well as by the renowned nutritionist Paula Mee, who will share a wealth of tips about staying fit and eating healthily. The speakers will focus on explaining ways to build activity into existing routines and on motivating attendees to consume good food every day.
A total of €125,000 is available for distribution to non-profit organisations through the Coca-Cola Thank You Fund in 2013. The Fund is seeking proposals from organisations who take an innovative approach to encouraging communities to lead more balanced, healthy and active lifestyles. The overall winner will receive €25,000 and a further ten organisations will receive €10,000 each. Attendees at each Roadshow event will learn how best to go about applying for the funding.
Winners of grants from previous rounds of the Fund will share their experience at these free events and give tips on how they went about winning funding last year. They will demonstrate just how much you can accomplish when you match the Fund’s support with high levels of energy and ambition.
Experts will also be on hand to provide advice on crafting and submitting your organisation’s entry, and to answer any questions you may have.
Further details on how to apply for funding or about these free events can be found at www.coca-cola.ie/thankyou with entries accepted up until the 19th of July 2013.
How to book
We invite you to pick the nearest Coca-Cola Thank You Fund Roadshow to you from this list and to reserve your free place by emailing cillian@q4pr.ie:
- 10:30am on Thursday 27th June at University Limerick Sports Campus
- 7pm on Thursday 27th June at the Mardyke Arena in Cork
- 12pm on 28th June at Old Connaught Rugby Club, Galway
- 12pm Tuesday 2nd July at Croke Park, Dublin
Please email cillian@q4pr.ie to confirm your place at your chosen Roadshow event
Jun 11, 2013
Only one-third of the Irish population is meeting the minimum recommended 150 minutes of weekly physical activity, and the low levels of walking are contributing to long-term health problems.
A seminar held in University College Cork (UCC), hosted by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH), the Centre of Excellence for Public Health (Queens University Belfast) and the HRB Centre for Health and Diet Research (UCC) – was to explore how recent research in the North and South of Ireland can support national policy and local government planning to increase the walkability of our towns and cities.
Why walkability is essential: Dr Kevin Balanda, Associate Director of IPH, said that, “the low levels of physical activity across the island has many and will have many implications for public health in the future. Recent IPH studies suggest that by 2020 there will be large increases in the number of people with obesity-related chronic conditions. IPH forecasts that, by 2020, there will be 366,000 people with hyp
ertension, 176,000 with diabetes and 29,000 with stroke. It is therefore highly essential that we reverse this trend by getting a more walkable population.”
Queens University Belfast’s Dr Mark Tully, said that, “in line with worldwide trends, only one third of the population meet the minimum recommended level of 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity – such as walking or cycling – per week. Urgent action is required to tackle this inactivity epidemic. The goal of public health is to help more people be more active, more often. Neighbourhood designs that support healthier choices are essential.”
Dr Tully goes on to say, “A recent study in the United States shows that 37% of residents in high walkability neighbourhoods met the required levels of physical activity compared to 18% of residents in low walkability areas. Another factor that we have found in our own research in Northern Ireland is the importance of addressing people’s perceptions of where they live and encouraging people to explore their local neighbourhoods to find attractive places to engage in physical activity.”
Suburbs: UCC’s WIliam Brady talked about the census data from 2011 and that only 3% of the population in some of the cork suburb areas he studied, walk or cycle to work or school. This is due to a poor design of pedestrian routes and the distances people have to travel to get to basic amenities like schools, parks, shops, bus stops and work. Not surprisingly people overwhelmingly rely on passive forms of travel like a car for example.
Mr Brady goes on to say, “unfortunately, many of the suburban residential areas built over the last 20 years or so around the country don’t encourage, and in fact actually discourage, walking as a mode of transport because of physical barriers to walking and the poor quality of the pedestrian facilities. This means we will have to think of ways to ‘retrofit’ these suburban areas in order to introduce walkability through creating attractive pedestrian-only and pedestrian-oriented walkways in suburbs as well as town and city centres. This may involve partially removing or breaching existing boundary walls within many housing estates, widening and enhancing existing links with lighting, landscaping measures and making improvements to green and open spaces throughout residential areas.”
Professor Geraint Ellis, Queen’s University Belfast adds that, “improving the walkability of our towns and cities demands the combined efforts of those working in planning and public health as well as the management of public services such as parks and public transport. This can be strongly supported by good knowledge exchange partnerships with universities that helps set up a virtuous circle between research and the implementation of policy and practice.”
Read More Here (The Journal Article)
Read More Here (Press Release)
Jun 10, 2013
Tourist arrivals in Malaysia rose to more than 25 million arrivals in 2012 and revenue climbed to almost $20.2 billion, which is an increase of 4% since 2011. Part of this increase is down to the targeting, by a dedicated government agency, of sport events to generate tourism revenues.
Under Malaysia’s Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), tourism was identified as one of the 12 National Key Economic Areas (NKEA), to drive the nations economic growth. A number of tourism development projects have been put in place in order to achieve 36 million arrivals and $60 billion in tourism receipts by 2020.
One of these development projects include securing major events. In 2012, Malaysia managed to attract $308 million in tourist receipts from tourists visiting Malaysia for major sports, art, lifestyle and entertainment events.
‘Malaysia Major Events’ the new agency, created under the Ministry for Tourism and Culture, is confident that it will achieve greater milestones in growing Malaysia as the destination for major sporting events within the Asia-Pacific region that is expected to contribute $140 million to the Gross National Income (GNI) and 8,000 temporary jobs to the nation by 2020. With the high availability of fully equipped and sophisticated sports facilities & infrastructures, Malaysia is now experienced and has gained wide expertise in organizing and hosting various types of sporting events.
Malaysia Sporting Events will be the catalyst in securing major sporting event bids for Malaysia and it aims to make more progress at the SportAccord convention 2013 in Russia. Malaysia has already hosted major events like the Formula 1 Malaysian Grand Prix, Moto GP Malaysian Grand Prix, Autobacs Super GT Series, international leg of the PGA Tour, ATP/WTP tennis tournaments etc. Through its efforts, in 2016 they will host the World Table Tennis Championships and the IFMA (Muaythai) World Championships in 2014. Also, they will be hosting the 127th IOC session in 2015 at the Kuala Lumpar Convention Centre, Malaysia.
Research by the British Tourism Authority has indicated that the tourist who comes to indulge in his or her chosen sporting passion is likely to spend twice as much as the ‘ordinary tourist’.
In Ireland, the power of sports tourism was very much evident in 2012 with the American Football Game between U.S Navy and Notre Dame which attracted a capacity crowd which included 35,000 visitors from the US. Many of these visitors combined the game with a holiday in Ireland and preliminary research has indicated that hotels, restaurants, shops and golf courses saw a sharp increase in business. Initial figures indicate that the overall contribution to the economy as a whole was in excess of €100 million. Other examples of the power of sports tourism include the Volvo Ocean Race, the Men’s Olympic Hockey Qualifiers and the Youth Sailing World Championships.
Sarah O’Connor, Chief Executive Officer, Federation of Irish Sport, writing in our Annual Review said that: ‘the sooner we set up a dedicated agency to bid for sports events the better. ‘Sport Event Denmark’ is an outstanding example of what is possible. A joint venture between the Danish Government and the country’s national sporting organisations, Sport Event Denmark, is now so successful that it wins 2 out of every 3 events it bids for. In recent years, Sport Event Denmark, has facilitated the hosting in Denmark of the Olympic and UEFA congresses, World and European championships across a wide range of sports including cycling, wrestling and football.’
A similar model could and would deliver for Ireland. We have a strong track record in hosting sporting events but never has there been a strategic approach to the bringing in of such events . This is an area where Ireland could excel and deliver a boost to our tourism industry.
The establishment of ‘Sport Bid Ireland’ would ensure that sports and government were working in tandem to secure a steady stream of appropriate events into Ireland with all the ancillary benefits that this would provide. Ireland could learn from our Malaysian and Danish counterparts where a strategic approach to attracting sporting events has delivered a real economic return.
Read More Here (Malaysia)
Read More Here (Sport Tourism Ireland)
