Latest News (January 2001)

Only 25 weeks to go!!
The Christmas and New Year festivities are over and done with and now our attention turns firmly to Saturday July 7th and the opening of the 9th NatWest Island Games here in the Isle of Man, the spiritual home of the Games.

Already the first entries (event participation) from competing islands have been received - thank you Alderney and the Isle of Wight.
We look forward to receiving the rest as soon as possible before the entry deadline of January 31st. The deadline for competitor entries is May 7th.

The many pieces of the organisation jigsaw are falling into place although much remains to be done to finalise all the details.



Ceremonies
Plans for the opening and closing ceremonies are well advanced under the guidance of our Ceremonies Co-ordinator, Brian Shooter.

The Opening Ceremony to be staged at the National Sports Centre on the evening of Saturday July 7th promises to be quite a spectacle whilst the Closing Ceremony on the evening of Friday July 13th will be held at the Villa Marina and will follow close on the heels of the final event, the cycling Town Criterium, which will be following a course including part of the Villa Marina grounds.

Sponsorships
Sponsorship details for the individual sports are also nearly complete.

Already the sponsorship of shooting (Securicor), golf (Scottish Provident) and sailing (Manx Telecom) have been announced and a further 9 sponsorship deals have been agreed. Don Lindsay, our Commercial Co-ordinator, is putting the various packages together and also working out the details of the many attractive commemorative and fancy goods items to be produced - full details of these will appear on this site in due course.
Don's update (Jan '01) on the latest sponsorship is posted in full on this site in the Information section - to follow shortly.

Newsletter
The 7th Newsletter is at the printers and will be issued shortly.

Media Meetings
Media representatives from a wide range of organisations will be attending briefing meetings later this month (Wednesday January 24th for radio and Thursday January 25th for television and film).
The meetings which will include visits to the designated Press Centre (at the TT Grandstand), and the National Sports Centre and many of the other sporting venues, have been arranged by our Media Co-ordinator, Ella Slack, and her deputy, Daphne Caine.

Organisational Meetings
Preliminary meetings with the Sports Co-ordinators and their Results Organisers have been held at DataCentre (our Results Sponsors) to plan the format of the results displays and to clarify hardware and manpower requirements.

Travel and Accommodation
Accommodation and transport (both external and internal) arrangements are nearly finalised thanks largely to the efforts of our Travel and Accommodation Co-ordinator, Geoff Le Page and his team.

Volunteer Recruitment
The volunteer recruitment programme launched last month has got off to a steady start although many more are needed (see December's Latest News for details and to download an application form).
Gary Jakeman, our Games Organiser, is being assisted in the sorting of our volunteers by Carrie Hunt.

Looking Ahead
Our would-be competitors are putting the festive season behind them and getting down to serious training for July!
They, like us the organisers, are really looking forward to welcoming our visitors in 25 weeks' time and making the 9th Island Games the best yet!

John Christal (2001 Results Co-ordinator)

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