Team Communication #11

Dear Final Leg Team Members;

Happy New Years Eve!  I hope this e-mail finds everyone well and you are all ready to ring in the New Year! 

It's exactly 67 days before the Final Leg team is on the ground in Austria and ready to create excitement for the Games and spread awareness for Special Olympics and I know that you are all anxious to know a little more about the Final Leg event and everything we have planned.  The 2017 Austria Final Leg Event Guide is now ready for your download on the Final Leg website at www.letr-finalleg.org

Please feel free to share this 2017 Austria Final Leg Event Guide with anyone and everyone!  The Guide is in a .pdf format and it is indexed so you can go directly to a specific section of interest to you.  When you are in the table of contents, hover over a section title and then click on it, it will take you directly to that section.  To return to the table of contents hover over the Final Leg logo or Special Olympics logo at the top of the page and click on that and you will be taken directly back to the table of contents.

The Final Leg Event Guide contains information about; the Final Leg event, the 2017 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Austria, the Law Enforcement Torch Run, Special Olympics, Team members & profiles, Final Leg Routes, Ceremony locations, law enforcement & athlete speaking assignments for ceremonies and much more!   In Final Legs past, many team members have printed out the section with the Torch Runner profiles, brought it with them and had their teammates sign it as a keepsake. You might want to consider doing this.

There will also be a Team Guide provided in the very near future just for Team members that contains a bit more information about some specifics that should not be public such as contact information for each team member so you can continue to communicate with one another post event.  This Team Guide will also have specific hotel locations and other team movements that we do not want publicly shared as safety and security is always first and foremost in everything that we do.  There are no security or safety concerns on our Final Leg event but as law enforcement officers we always do our due diligence in that regard with everything we do, wherever we are.  

Both the main page of the Final Leg website and the private area for team members only, the "Team Zone" has been updated and enhanced.  Please visit these areas.  Remember the Team Zone is for Team members only and is password protected.  The password is 0627.  PLEASE do not share this password!

A big THANK YOU goes out to Adi Reiter and Markus Gloessl and the rest of the Austria Logistic crew for all their hard work planning each and every run, ceremony, etc.  This has been a major piece of work that has been in progress for well over a year.  The routes and runs are amazing! 

I also like to send a big shout out and THANK YOU to Scott Whyte, our website and logistics guru, a Torch Run volunteer who also wears the hat of International Law Enforcement Torch Run Executive Council Chair.  Scott has worked tirelessly putting not only this Guide together but also our Operations Manual, the website and so much more.  This is no easy task and Scott certainly had the "patience of Job" as changes kept coming in (the nature of a Final Leg event!) while completing this monumental tasks. 

In this New Year and as we endeavor to create awareness and make a lasting impression on the great people of Austria and all those all around the world about our unified efforts to benefit Special Olympics, I would like you to think about this. "Never underestimate the power of a small group of people to change the world."  In fact, that is the only way the world has ever changed!  Each of those small groups had one person who inspired them.  My "one" person was a Special Olympics athlete by the name of Billy Church that I met 37 years ago as a young rookie police officer.  Think about that "one" person who inspired you.  In the New Year, I challenge each of you to be that "one" person who inspires another to help propel our Law Enforcement Torch Run movement forward into the future.

We are the Torch Run, Mighty, Mighty, Torch Run........

All the best;

John

John Newnan

Team Captain

2017 Austria Final Leg