On 10 October, the national workshop organised by the Cyprus Olympic Committee took place in the headquarters of the NOC of Cyprus in Nicosia.  

Heidi Pekkola, project manager of RINGS, started by presenting the project and its main outcomes, ie. the Public Affairs Guidelines, the stakeholders’ tool and the online platform. 

Prof. Dr. Holger Preuss of the University of Mainz, co-writer of the Handbook on Strategic Management of NOCs, spoke about strategic planning and its importance in sports management, and launched the workshops. During the workshops, participants were asked to reflect on challenges that sport organisations can face in the future, such as sports washing, economic crisis, or Covid-19, to assess risks linked to them, potential impact on their organisation, and how to react. 

The introduction and conclusion of the seminar involved contributions from the President of Cyprus National Olympic Committee Georgios Chrysostomou and Sports Administrative Officer of the NOC Georgios Panayides.  

About the RINGS project 

The RINGS project, led by the EOC EU Office and co-funded by the Erasmus+ Sport programme, is running from January 2020 to December 2022 and focuses on the strategic management of NOCs (ie., change management, public affairs and communications, governance of NOCs). The last phase of the project is to organise national training workshops in each of the 11 partner NOCs. Each of them focuses on the specific themes that are relevant to the national context.