Our first stop of the day was CAS(the court of arbitration of sport). We were lucky enough to to hear from Fabien Cagnuex, Attorney at Law managing counsel. He showed us around some the of hearing rooms and the press rooms. The building is beautiful and so modern. The heating rooms even have a hidden room for translations for the hearings. The room was set up for online meetings as well with monitors set up around to table. We got to the auditorium and got to hear all about how CAS works and what kind of cases they get. The history of the institution was very interesting, I would have thought CAS was around longer than only 1984. It’s crazy how many cases they get in a year, in the past couple years they have has over 900 cases each year. It sounded like they get a majority of their cases around the time of the Olympics. They open up their courts 10 days before the games so they will be able to handle eligibility issues. I’m just amazed how they are able to take in cases so fast and make a decision. Fabien said that one of their cases they got at 11:00 pm and make a decision by 3:00 am!
Our second stop of the day was World Aquatics! The walk to their building was absolutely gorgeous. The people we spoke to were nice enough to set out some croissants and water for everyone! I really enjoyed hearing about the rebrand of World Aquatics and their reasoning behind it! The logo stands for the 5 countries and the 6 disciplines of aquatics and the whole logo represents the world. They talked a lot about the social media side of their business and how they try to promote themselves. I liked to hear that they do all they can to help their community by having all sorts of programs as well as their Masters Championship, one open to all ages and people who want to compete but are now at the Olympic level. They even had a man competing that was 105 years old!
After World Aquatics, some of us headed to lunch downtown and we found a burger joint that was very good. We also did some shopping at some of the local venders.
We got back to the hotel around 3:30 to join a Zoom with Rodrigo who works in TMS at the IOC. It was great to hear from him. He talked a lot about the TOP sponsors and some of the rules athletes have to abide by for their own sponsors.
Our last adventure of the day was a shopping trip to the market for our picnic by the lake. Prof Kim set Kirstyn and I a budget and we were in charge of getting food. Everyone chipped in and we had a lot of fun, we picked out many cheeses, crackers, fresh fruit, chocolate, and even son sausages and chicken to grill. I think we would all agree that it was one of our favorite meals. Once we finished up at the store we headed over to the lake. I have no words, it was absolutely gorgeous. It looked like a painting. Kyle, Prof Kim and even Kirstyn grilled the food for us while the rest of the group set up our spread for dinner. We ate good food and looked at our unbelievable view. Prof Kim also bought a volleyball for us and we all ended up playing a keep it up game for a while. Selby started doing backflips as soon as we finished eating(If you couldn’t tell, she’s a gymnast).
