The International Olympic Committee (IOC) today announced in Lausanne the winners of the inaugural Juan Antonio Samaranch Medal for Olympic Collecting.
The award was introduced by the IOC in 2012 to honour the legacy of former IOC President Samaranch, an avid Olympic collector who introduced programmes to encourage the collection and study of Olympic stamps, coins and memorabilia during his time in office.
The medal is awarded each Olympiad to individuals or organisations that have made long and outstanding contributions to Olympic collecting at local, national or international levels.
The winners of the Juan Antonio Samaranch Medal for Olympic Collecting for the XXX Olympiad are:
- Mr Jaroslav Petrasek, Czech Republic, for active leadership in Olympic philately internationally, nationally and locally.
- Mr Donald Bigsby, USA, for establishing and leading the world’s largest Olympic memorabilia club, Olympin.
- Mr Donald Mackay-Coghill, Australia, for developing and leading initiatives to bring coin collecting to the general public.
- China Post Group, China, for the development and promotion of Olympic collecting in China.
“I congratulate the winners of this prestigious award and thank them for their active and enthusiastic support of Olympic collecting and, through this, the Olympic Movement itself,” said President Rogge. “Olympic collectors are the unofficial custodians of a vast amount of Olympic history. Olympic stamps, coins and other memorabilia all tell their own stories about the Olympic Games and thereby help to produce, in an easily accessible and visual manner, a different kind of understanding of the Olympic Movement.”
The medals were presented to the winners on behalf of the IOC by IOC member Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, son of the late President Samaranch, on 22 June in Lausanne.
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