ATHENS: The flame for the London Olympics, which start on July 27 after a 70-day torch relay around Britain, was formally handed over at a ceremony in a damp Athens on Thursday. The flame, lit from the sun's rays at the home of the ancient Games in Olympia a week ago, was handed over under grey and rainy skies to Britain's Princess Anne by the president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee Spyros Capralos. The flame will be guarded overnight in the British embassy in Athens. It will then be flown, safely contained in special lanterns for the journey, from Athens to a naval air base in south-west England on Friday before the relay starts at Land's End on Saturday. London Games chairman and twice Olympic 1,500-metre champion Sebastian Coe paid tribute to Greece for their hospitality and even thanked the hosts for providing "British weather" for the ceremony.

"Thank you for the warm hospitality and welcome that you and your country have extended to us, particularly for laying on the British weather this evening," said Coe. "Like the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Flame belongs to the world," he told spectators including London mayor Boris Johnson and former England soccer captain David Beckham. Coe spoke of a 'massive, massive moment' as the clock ticks down to the Games opening on July 27 while Mayor Boris Johnson was typically ebullient. "It's an amazing day for us. This is the moment when we prepare to take the torch and the eyes of the world are swivelling to London," Johnson told reporters. "I think they will see a city that has made phenomenal progress in getting ready...by any measure, London is extraordinarily well prepared."

Bittersweet emotions: Greek rowing world champion Christina Giazitzidou carried the flame into the stadium, built in 330BC and reconstructed for 1896, after it traveled from its overnight perch on the golden rock of the Acropolis down through the centre of Athens. The final two torchbearers were Greek weightlifter Pyrros Dimas and Chinese gymnast Li Ning, who lit the cauldron at the 2008 Beijing Games. The lighting at ancient Olympia last week by an actress playing the role of high priestess brought bittersweet emotions for some of the spectators, emphasising how far Greece had fallen from its glorious past. Coe said the response to the torch relay around Greece since last Thursday had been extraordinary, despite the economic difficulties.

"It's reminded them that, for all the current challenges, you can't expunge 28 centuries of history. This is uniquely theirs and a moment of celebration," he said. The 70-day torch relay will travel 12,800 km around Britain, taking in 1,018 villages and the 1,085-metre summit of Snowdon, before culminating with the lighting of the Olympic cauldron in the Olympic Stadium on the opening day of the Games. The relay will also take in landmarks around Britain with the flame travelling by canal boat, cable car, tram, steam train, hot air balloon and even motorcycle sidecar on the Isle of Man TT course. More than 95 percent of the British population will be within an hour of the route. reuters

Read the rest of this entry »

The BBC has promised viewers they will "never miss a moment" of the London Olympics as it unveiled full details of its 2,500 hours of TV, radio and online coverage headed by Gary Lineker and Sue Barker.

London Olympics coverage will be on 26 TV channels, three radio stations and online, including blanket coverage on BBC1 and BBC3. Match of the Day presenter Lineker will host the main evening coverage on BBC1 with Barker anchoring the flagship channel's live afternoon show. The opening and closing ceremonies will be in the hands of BBC1's 10pm anchor, Huw Edwards.

Other presenters viewers will get to see plenty of on BBC1 during the Olympics include Clare Balding, Hazel Irvine, Gabby Logan and The One Show co-host Matt Baker. BBC3's Olympic coverage will be anchored by Formula One presenter Jake Humphrey.

Lineker described sport as the "ultimate reality [TV] show" and revealed he had spent the last few months researching the finer points of less familiar Olympic events such as fencing and taekwondo. "I've been studying hard for a good few months now. You've got to do it – I'm on three and a half hours every night on BBC1. This is enormous," he said.

"No-one here is an expert on all the sports and no one is expected to be. The fact I have completed at the highest level of sport gives me a slight advantage and understanding and probably a degree of respect from whoever I'm interviewing, which is important."

Radio 1 chart show host Reggie Yates and former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan are also part of the BBC team, along with former Olympians such as Sir Matthew Pinsent and Jonathan Edwards.

BBC1 will be devoted almost entirely to the Olympics for all 17 days of the games with regular BBC1 shows such as EastEnders switched to BBC2. The main channels will be complemented by a further 24 dedicated Olympic digital services available on satellite, cable and online via the BBC red button.

Between them the 26 TV channels will broadcast 2,500 hours of sporting action – 1,000 more than from Beijing in 2008 – out of an estimated 3,000 hours of Olympics competition. Flagship events, including the men's 100m final, will also be broadcast in 3D for the first time and in "super HD" at specific venues.

The Olympics will be a big ratings winner for the BBC with the final of the men's 100m, which will take place in primetime on BBC1 on Sunday 5 August, expected to be the most watched event, together with the opening and closing ceremonies.

During the Athens Olympics in 2004, the last in a European timezone, six events drew more than 10 million viewers on BBC1 including Kelly Holmes' gold medal wins in the 800m and 1500m and Paula Radcliffe in the marathon.

As one of the media organisations commissioned to provide coverage of the London Games by the host broadcaster, Olympic Broadcasting Services, the BBC's pictures will also be seen by hundreds of millions of viewers around the world. It also has bespoke cameras specifically dedicated to following the fortunes of Team GB athletes.

The BBC's director London 2012, Roger Mosey, said at the corporation's Olympics launch on Tuesday that its coverage would show that the "claimed obsolescence of the BBC is nonsense". He said that the theme of the BBC's programming would be that viewers will "never miss a moment".

As the event's host broadcaster the BBC's pictures will also be seen by hundreds of millions of viewers around the world. BBC Radio 5 Live's Olympics programming will be led by Mark Pougatch. Coverage will also feature on digital station 5 Live Sports Extra and a temporary digital radio station, 5 Live Olympic Extra.

Adrian Van Klaveren, controller of Radio 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra, said the "ambition is to capture every British gold medal" on the stations. But cricket fans need not fear – Test Match Special, broadcast on 5 Live Sports Extra as well as BBC Radio 4 long wave, will not be affected.

The 24 streamed TV channels will be four times as many as the BBC has previously broadcast during the Wimbledon tennis championships. The BBC will have cameras at all 32 venues, covering 26 Olympic sports and 39 disciplines.

Action not broadcast by the BBC will include some tennis matches — it will broadcast a maximum of five at any time — and preliminary rounds in events such as shooting.  Many of the extra digital channels will broadcast live uninterrupted coverage of events, often without commentary.

Balding denied that the slew of new channels and ways to watch would lead to a more fragmented viewing experience. "That shared experience becomes even more valuable, you have to watch it live. BBC1 will be trying to hit the big live points as they have done at any Olympic Games. The middle Saturday of the Games in Beijing, I was in the studio when we had to suddenly go to the taekwondo and you will still get that," she said.

The BBC will provide extra on-screen information about each sport, helping viewers with disciplines with which they may be less familiar, and alert them to the big events of the day with an interactive online video player.

BBC1's coverage will only be interrupted for its lunchtime and evening news bulletins, when its Olympics programming will switch to BBC2. BBC1 controller Danny Cohen said the corporation had thought carefully before deciding to devote almost the whole of his channel and BBC3's schedule to the games.

"We discussed it and looked at it in detail. It's only 17 days and BBC1's main purpose is to draw the nation together," said Cohen. "The key is to make sure we are offering viewers who don't want to watch the sport a wide range of choices across the portfolio. That's why BBC2 and BBC4 will focus on non-Olympic programming. It's a limited period and a complete treat."From Friday the BBC's Olympics website will broadcast continuous coverage of the torch relay around the country.

Read the rest of this entry »

BEIJING: When Chinese athletes swept to the top of the gold medal table during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the feat was accompanied by a wave of national pride, the culmination of China’s “100 year dream” to host the world’s most prestigious sports event. Whether China can repeat that feat at this year’s London Games will surely be watched closely by all. But cooler heads may prevail at home if that success is not repeated as China has been buoyed by the country’s other achievements since hosting the Games, such as its bounding economy. “I’m not sure it is now as politically important as it was, since they did it once,” said Susan Brownell, professor of anthropology and expert on Chinese sports at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

The simmering debate over the importance of the pursuit of medals began to heat up after the Beijing Games ended in success. There appeared to be acknowledgement the country lacks a broad-based sports culture and Olympic medals are generally won by a minority of government-supported athletes, raising questions over whether it can become a sports power, she said. “So I do have the feeling that with the great success of the Beijing Olympics, at least domestically it was hugely successful, that it’s not so important to prove themselves any more,” she added. “But why was it so important all along? It had to do with the idea of China standing up against domination by the West ... hosting the Olympics was called China’s 100-year dream.” This is, of course, not to say that China will not be trying to win as many golds as it can in London. China has not slackened off in its Olympics medals quest. Nor has the state even begun to back off from its involvement in producing national winners.

‘The cradle of world champions’: At the state-run Shichahai sports school, located in central Beijing not far from the top leadership compound at Zhongnanhai, the government begins training young athletes from as young as 6. Dubbed “the cradle of world champions” in a gold-embossed stone plinth outside one of its entrances, the school has raised 39 world champions and seven Olympic ones. Large Chinese flags dominate the austere gyms and other training rooms. Slogans reminiscent of the heyday of Chinese communism pasted around the campus exhort athletes not to forget that “All training is for competition” and “There are no heroic individuals, only heroic groups”. It is a spirit the school’s head, Shi Fenghua, has no intention of abandoning. “Competing peacefully like this as the Chinese nation is rising, confirms our abilities. China was once the sick man of Asia,” Shi told Reuters in her office. But Chinese sports officials are keen to temper expectations.

“Firstly, we were the host nation during the Beijing Olympics, doing battle on home turf, while in London we will be the guests. There’s the time difference, the different food and a different environment from Beijing,” he told Reuters. There also will be many new and somewhat untested faces competing in London, Cui said, citing table tennis champions Wang Nan and Zhang Yining among those who have now retired. “It will be a handover from the old to the new. Whether the young athletes can get through the test of such an enormous event as London, we will have to see what they can do.” Perhaps ironically, the official discussion of China’s medal hopes in London echoes that in the run up to Beijing – when officials routinely would play down the country’s prospects and play up its challenges. By the time the Games closed on Aug. 24 2008, China had earned 51 golds, leapfroging the United States’ 36 golds and topping the medals table for the first time. reuters

Read the rest of this entry »

The flame is kindled by a 'high priestess' who captures the morning sun's rays in a parabolic mirror. The ceremony comes amid political and economic turmoil in the home of the Ancient Olympics, where a week-long leg of the relay will be held. The flame flies to Britain on 18 May for a 70-day relay around the UK.

Locog Chairman Lord Coe, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge and Hellenic Olympic Committee president Spyros Capralos will be in Olympia for the moment marking the countdown to London 2012.

The lighting ceremony takes place in front of the ruins of the Temple of Hera from 11:30 local time (09:30BST) The flame - an Olympic symbol meant to represent purity because it comes from the sun - is then placed in an urn and taken to the stadium where the ancient Olympic Games were staged.

There, it will light the London 2012 torch of Liverpool-born Greek world champion 10km swimmer Spyros Gianniotis, who will carry it on the first leg of the relay around Greece. He will pass it on to Alex Loukos, 19, the first British torchbearer, a boxer and, in 2005, one of a delegation of east London schoolchildren who travelled to Singapore as part of London's final bid for the Games. The torch is due to travel 2,900kms (1,800 miles) through the country, carried by 500 torchbearers, on a route circling the country and travelling out to Crete.

Greece has seen huge demonstrations of social unrest in previous months, sparked by financial chaos and efforts to reach a deal with the European Union on a bail-out for the Greek economy. Talks to try to form a new government have been ongoing after elections on Sunday failed to produce a conclusive result.

Several international companies including BMW have stepped in to help fund the torch's journey. The Greek section of the 2012 torch relay ends at the Panathenaic Stadium, Athens, on Thursday 17 May, where the flame is handed over to London Olympic Games organisers.

The stadium hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. The last torchbearers in Greece will be Greek weightlifter Pyrros Dimas and Chinese gymnast Li Ning - who lit the cauldron at the Beijing 2008 opening ceremony.

The 2008 Olympic torch relay, which travelled the globe, was dogged by pro-Tibet, democracy and anti-China protests. The 2012 flame will travel straight from Greece to the UK on 18 May, flying into the Royal Navy airbase at Culdrose, near Helston in Cornwall.

The UK torch relay begins at Land's End the following morning. Carried by 8,000 torchbearers, the Barber Osgerby-designed torch will cover 8,000 miles across all of the country's nations and regions, to reach the Olympic Stadium in Stratford on 27 July to light the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

For the ancient Greeks, fire was a divine element believed to have been stolen from the Gods. A flame was first lit at the modern Olympics at the Amsterdam 1928 summer games, but it was not until Berlin 1936 that a torch relay route was set out from Greece to Germany. Viewers in the UK can see live coverage of the torch lighting ceremony on the BBC News Channel, BBC Radio 5 Live and www.bbc.co.uk/2012/ on Thursday morning.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest about-turns affects road cycling events. Organisers will charge up to £15 for 30,000 tickets for prime vantage points at Box Hill and up to £15 for 3,500 for the start and finish area of the time trial at Hampton Court Palace, having said admission would be free.

In addition, about 6,000 tickets at £10 each will be sold for the last three days to watch a large television screen on Henman Hill at Wimbledon. There will be no tennis on the outside courts on those days.
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games says in a statement that the ‘new’ tickets, which go on general sale from May 23, “will help more people get to the Games”.

But insiders say it is an attempt to fend off criticism from nearly a million applicants who will again fail to secure any tickets in the next round of sales which start on Friday and to appease people who had failed to register in the system last year. This latest sales round is for people who have been in the Olympic ticket system already. This is the last major opportunity to secure sought-after Olympic tickets to all events, including 47,000 to the athletics, 60,000 to the beach volleyball and 5,000 to the opening ceremony.

It is expected nearly all of the 928,000 tickets available will be sold within hours of being released and Ticketmaster executive Chris Edmonds has flagged that the demand will create a slow computer system that could take 20 minutes to process a payment. “People will have to have patience,” he said.

However, British Cycling president Brian Cookson expressed his disappointment at the new announcement of charges, and said one of the key attractions of road cycling was its free access for spectators. He claimed Locog was trying to recover some costs of providing facilities. “There is a cost in managing the venue and Locog is recovering that cost and keeping it to a minimum, but we would prefer it was free,” he said.

Locog has staggered the release of the tickets on Friday to try to circumvent the anger that accompanied the earlier ticket ballots where two in three applicants failed to secure any. But if all of the eligible applicants apply for tickets, at least three-quarters of them, or close to a million applicants, will be left disappointed.

Locog has tried to fill this sale with as many tickets as it has available – including 50,000 prime finals football tickets to Wembley, more than 100,000 that were returned in the resale programme, and 70,000 to the Olympic Park that will allow spectators to watch the action on a big screen in the middle of the Park, but not to any of the venues. Officials have been conscious that as few as 250,000 applicants may secure any tickets in this latest round.

The sales will start to a priority group of 20,000 applicants, called Fans 2606 (the date of an email from Locog), who failed to secure a ticket in both the first and second ballot attempts last year. They will have a 31-hour window from 11am on Friday, on a first come first served basis, to buy up to four tickets at one session.

Locog chief executive Paul Deighton predicts that all of the athletics tickets, including 5,000 for the men’s 100m final, and the two ceremonies, will be snapped up by Fans 2606 and that the 6,000 swimming and 4,000 cycling tickets may be also in high demand.

The remaining tickets will then go on sale at 11am on Sunday until May 17 to a second priority group – the 1.2 million applicants who failed to get a ticket in the first ballot but who did not apply for the second ballot. “People will not be able to buy two tickets at two sessions, they can only buy up to four tickets at one session,” said Deighton. Whatever is left, coupled with the charged tickets to previously announced free experiences, will be then available to everyone.

Read the rest of this entry »

The government has ordered an inquiry into security at London's Olympic park after a worker reportedly smuggled a fake bomb onto the site.

The man, who has been employed at the site for several years, allegedly carried an artificial bomb in the cabin of his digger through two checkpoints without being searched by security staff.

The Home Office said it had asked Locog, the organiser of the Games, to look into the incident and report back to the home secretary.

According to the Sun on Sunday the worker was able to drive the package through the site, taking it past the velodrome before posing for a photograph with it outside the Olympic stadium.

He told the paper he had become concerned after noticing he was only searched by security when he entered the site in the mornings, and that he could enter and exit the grounds in his digger during the day without further checks.

"I can meet anyone on the outside without anyone knowing and bring anything inside without anyone checking. If I had terrorist connections I could be bringing in explosives, chemicals – anything at all. It's a massive security loophole."

He added that the stunt, 24 hours before 40,000 people attended the official opening of the stadium, was designed to show how vulnerable the site, which also includes the athletes' village, could be to a terrorist attack.

Locog insisted the site would be searched and locked down before the Games begin in less than three months time. A spokeswoman said: "As you would expect our security increases significantly the closer we get to the Games. The park and the village will be searched and sealed before it is locked down for Games time."

The bill for security at the Olympics is set to top £1bn and includes 23,700 guards bolstered by up to 13,500 troops at peak times.

The RAF will be on standby and batteries of surface-to-air missiles are being considered at up to six sites to deter an airborne attacks. Last month, the Ministry of Defence announced that military snipers deployed in helicopters would also be patrolling the skies during the event and, if required, would shoot pilots of low-flying aircraft that might be involved in terrorist attacks.

On Saturday, all 40,000 fans who attended the official opening had to go through full airport-style security and some were also searched in marquees. Armed guards patrolled the site, which has been surrounded by an 11-mile electric fence, at a cost £80m.

The Locog spokeswoman added; "Clearly a tupperware box containing batteries, a moblie phone and some loose wires would not pose a security threat on a construction site. However, we will be looking into the allegations to ensure our security regimes are as robust as they need to be at this time."

Read the rest of this entry »

There seems to be no limit to the efforts of Lord Coe and his friends at the International Olympic Committee to bring this summer's London Games into ridicule and contempt. A week-long "military exercise" is currently under way in the capital. RAF Typhoon jets are to scream back and forth over the Thames. Starstreak surface-to-air missile batteries are being set up in East End parks and on flats in Bow, with 10 soldiers manning each one. Army and navy helicopters will clatter back and forth, with snipers hanging from their doors "to shoot down pilots of terrorist planes".

Machine-guns will for the first time be toted by guards on the London tube. Police special forces, "trained to kill", will wear balaclavas to avoid identification. There are to be naval landing craft roaming the coast off Weymouth and submarines at the ready. The Olympics have become a festival of the global security industry, with a running and jumping contest as a sideshow. No one in government dares call a halt. Nero in his prime could not have squandered so much money on circuses.

The Olympics have become an Orwellian parody of what happens when a world agency blackmails a government aching for prestige into spending without limit. Not one defence spokesman has come up with a plausible scenario for the jets and missiles. The latter have a range of just three miles and are said to be usable "only at the express instruction of the prime minister". What will they shoot down, and on whose head will it crash?

These boys-with-toys are costing taxpayers £1bn yet they cannot add an iota to national security. They have nothing to do with deterring terrorism, even supposing there to be any such threat. The modern terrorist uses suicide tactics, by definition immune to deterrence. All the government has done is raise the politico-military profile of the Games and tempted some crackpot to have a go. Even at the street level, Occupy London and the cycling militants must regard Lord Coe's VIP lanes as a golden opportunity. The Olympic organisers are planning to close the Mall, Horse Guards Parade and most of St James's Park from June onwards, for fear someone might plant a bomb near the volleyball contest, crazily located behind Downing Street as a sop to Tony Blair. This is despite the prime minister and the mayor's office specifically countermanding the decision. Computer firms eager for contracts place regular stories about the "threat to the games from cyber-attack". One firm has been hired to deploy 450 "IT wizards" to guard the Games from hackers.

This means that, for the rest of the summer, London will effectively be "ruled" by the IOC. Enthusiasts for world government should take note. An unaccountable, self-validating body expects five-star hotels, chauffeur-driven BMWs, Soviet-style Zil lanes and all-green light phases for its thousands of "officials" and corporate hangers-on. It not only expects them, it gets them. It demanded and got its own legislative powers, under the 2006 London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act. Lord Coe does what the IOC tells him and passes the bill to George Osborne, who pays it. When the opening ceremony alone was £30m short (on a staggering budget of £60m), the cheque was promptly sent round.

The IOC is ever vigilant for its sponsors. Inspectors are to fan out across the capital, arresting anyone who uses the words "2012 Olympics" or any other associative phrase, for not paying Coe and the IOC a fortune in sponsorship fees. Jamie Oliver cannot hold an Olympics party in Victoria Park as he is a non-sponsor. Blogs, pictures or videos on YouTube or Facebook are banned. Anyone who so much as carries an unapproved bag, hat or shoe in a venue is banned. The Chinese politburo is Liberty Hall compared with this authoritarianism.

Transport for London has been reduced to a gibbering wreck. It has warned Londoners to get out of the city for the duration – at what cost to the economy? Citizens have been warned that central London roads will be closed, tube drivers may go on strike, and hospital casualty departments will be short of blood. How this will make money for London, as promised by Coe and others, is a mystery. As a tourist destination the place is being put on a par with Baghdad or Kabul.

There is no civic dividend from this sum and never has been. August in London is always a light month and, as the empty rows at Athens and Beijing showed, Olympic sports are not people draws. The irony is that the chief success of the London Olympics organisers has been the chief source of criticism. They have undoubtedly generated domestic enthusiasm. By making ticket sales a national lottery they achieved what appears to be the first sold-out Olympics of modern times.

However, roughly 85% of these buyers are Britons, few of whom will stay in London hotels. The crowds will be concentrated at the venues. It is the government, through its hospitality for the IOC "family", that will sustain the luxury hotel market this August. For the non-games districts of the capital, I would be surprised if shops, buses and tubes are not half deserted, taxis unused, theatres, cinemas and concert halls empty and any royal park not fenced off for a commercial sponsor pleasantly uncrowded.

The London Games began in a spirit of economy and popular enthusiasm. At the considerable cost of £2.4bn, they were to answer the state gigantism of the Beijing Games and fuse modern sport into the urban fabric. London would prove that cities did not have to be rich to host the games. It would be "the people's games".

The IOC put a stop to that. It drove a pliant British government to the present paranoia, budgetary incontinence and corporate greed. If the image of the London Games is to be rescued this summer, it must rely on diverting attention to the sincerity of young athletes and spectators, on somehow restoring the dignity of the sporting spirit. For now, a noble movement has been hijacked by a monster that is plainly out of control.

Read the rest of this entry »

The centrepiece venue will receive its biggest and final test before the Olympic opening ceremony this week, with four days of competition in the British University and Colleges Athletics Championship on the track from Friday, and an “entertainment event” watched by 40,000 people on Saturday night.

The performance, which will mark 2,012 hours until the Olympics, is crucial to the stadium being granted a safety licence for its 80,000 Games-time capacity. Newham Council will have to be satisfied that the management of crowds and various safety elements are handled well. James Bulley, the director of venues and infrastructure for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, said every aspect of the stadium would be tested. “We are testing all the operational areas for ticketing, entry and exits, the kiosks that we have opened up for the first time for food and drink, the toilets, the merchandising. “We are also in full athletics set-up, so all the sports equipment has to be installed, the hammer cage and such like, the broadcast and press camera positions, mixed zones and the like. “Our teams have one opportunity to test with 40,000 people in the stadium before we lock-down on May 12 to begin preparations for the opening ceremony.”

WATER POLO
The Cube, a temporary venue with a capacity of 5,000, took its bow yesterday, with four international women’s teams, including Great Britain, getting their first experience of the water before a tournament starting Thursday.

With most fans sitting in a steep-rake of black seats on one side of the asymmetric building it will be intimate and could create a raucous atmosphere. Water polo does not always have its own area at the Olympics, having to make do with a home in the middle of a main 50-metre pool, and the players are enthused by the prospect.

“We are just excited to be here,” said Fran Leighton, the captain of the GB team, staring up at the main grandstand. “There’s going to be a massive crowd which we are just not used to. It is going to take a bit of concentration to keep your eye on the game rather than looking up to the gods, but seeing it full of British fans will be fabulous.”

The venue is trialling some innovations which it hopes will be adopted by the world governing body for use in the Games. These include coloured light strips across the bottom of the pool to delineate the five-metre area and around the major box (sin-bin). They hope these will make the game easier to follow and more dramatic.

RIVERSIDE ARENA, HOCKEY
The 60,000 tickets for the men’s and women’s invitational hockey tournament sold out within 14 minutes.
The distinctive blue-and-pink pitches are staging their first competitive action as Great Britain’s women take on world champions Argentina, China and Korea and the men Australia, Germany and India.
As with all the venues, the test event is a chance to recreate Games-time operations for volunteers and staff. Venues are split into distinct zones, with players and officials separate from media, who in turn are separated from spectators.

The pitches are still bedding in, and the Australian team have complained about the surface being slippery, but there was excitement among players and officials as the first spectators filtered in on Wednesday morning. “It is absolutely fantastic to be here just a few weeks out from the Games,” said Andy Halliday, the GB men’s team manager. “We are staying in a hotel in Westfield, and to open the curtains and see the park laid out is unbelievable when six years ago the same view was a wasteland. It is part of the journey to the Games for us to come here, play and get a sense of what the place will feel like with 16,000 people in here.”

PUBLIC REALM
This week’s test events are the only opportunity for Locog to test how it operates the public areas in the Olympic Park. With several venues in use there will be 140,000 spectators passing through during the next five days, peaking at 75,000 on Saturday. In addition there will be 11,000 staff and volunteers and 3,000 athletes and coaches on site.

“This is a really important week for us not just to test individual facilities and their operations, but also how we operate the park as an overall zone,” said Paul Deighton, chief executive of Locog. “We need to see people moving around, how people come in and out, the security process, the last mile between the transport hubs and the security gates.

A crucial area is that surrounding the main stadium, which is close to the spectator gate through which more than 70 per cent of spectators will pass during the Games. “Egress from the main stadium is one of the main things we will be looking at this week. How people get out, how much time they spend in the park afterwards, how they queue. “It’s also an opportunity to test the communications between our Park operations team on site and our main operations centre back in Canary Wharf, which handles operations across all the venues.”

SECURITY
Getting large crowds in and out of the Olympic Park several times a day is the major logistical challenge for Locog and one that will be tested thoroughly over the coming days. With multiple sessions across four venues in the park it is the closest organisers will get to Games conditions. Locog’s solution to the need to carry out airport-style checks on all spectators is manpower. Up to 62 security lanes will be used this week, with as many as 162 during the Games. Despite this Lord Coe, the London 2012 chairman, warned there would be queuing, and even familiar venues would take longer to access.

“We are testing spectator flows and systems this week but yes, there will be some queuing,” Coe said. “Part of our communication here is really important. Whether it is the Olympic Park, or Wimbledon or football grounds, these are not ordinary championships. For example, if I go to Stamford Bridge I might build in 20 minutes, perhaps less, to get in and out of the stadium. “But if you go to the Olympic football, build in more time, it will take longer than normal, particularly if you are benchmarking against Wimbledon or Lord’s or Wembley. “There is an added tier of security, we have no appetite for risk, but that is what we are testing and we are working to minimise the amount of disruption.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Moynihan vowed on Tuesday to lead the fight for a tougher sanction against drug-takers after the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected the BOA’s lifetime ban. He believes that those who benefit from performance-enhancing substances should be suspended for at least four years, rather than the current two.

However, those with influence beyond the UK on Tuesday said that Moynihan’s strident tone is divorced from legal reality and that there was little chance of his rhetoric becoming regulation. At the same time, the BOA revealed serious misgivings among athletes over Chambers and Millar’s potential inclusion in the Games, despite having served doping bans. Sarah Winckless, chairman of the BOA’s athletes’ commission, believes that athletes overwhelmingly oppose the CAS decision. She told Telegraph Sport that she will advise those who disagree with Chambers and Millar’s inclusion to avoid expressing their views.

“I think athletes will be accepted into the team but I think there will be some personal feelings that we will encourage the athletes to keep to themselves. You work very hard to compete and you work very hard to train and people are very proud of how they got to medal-winning performances.”

Chambers’ and Millar’s experiences since returning to competition suggests Winckless might be overstating the strength of opposition towards them.

Millar was a valued member of the British team that helped Mark Cavendish to win the world title last year, with the Manxman repeatedly saying he wants his “road captain” beside him in at London 2012.
Chambers’s lawyer, Siza Agha, meanwhile, issued a list of 19 British and international sprinters who back Chambers’s right to compete, having served his two-year ban in 2006.

The chances of future doping offenders facing the same restrictions that applied to Chambers and Millar seem slim, however, as Moynihan promised to spearhead attempts to persuade the World Anti-Doping Agency to implement a tougher code.

Tellingly however, he has not argued for life bans, either publicly or in the BOA’s submission to the continuing review of the Wada code.That suggests he knows such sanctions are unsustainable in law. His critics will suggest that undermines his support for a bylaw that allows national bodies to impose their own bans.

Dave Howman, the Wada general secretary, said yesterday that life bans for first offences were “totally impossible”. “There would not be a human rights lawyer or sports lawyer in the world who would suggest that,” he said. Howman also believes that automatic four-year bans for first offences would be difficult to enforce in law, a “fact” he said that Moynihan has chosen to ignore in adopting a moral stance on the issue.

He said Moynihan “has expressed views which have hardly had any touch with the real facts or situation relating to anti-doping and I don’t think a slanging match is helpful or appropriate. “There were no crumbs left [in the judgment] for the BOA, and that was probably because of the way the BOA approached it.

“We have to retain a gentle touch with reality. Whatever sanctions are in place must be able to sustain a challenge in international law, and be proportionate.”However, the IOC is hoping to rewrite the Wada code so that doping offenders miss at least one Games. Such a rule could face the same challenges as an automatic four-year ban, but its inclusion could owe more to politics than legal nicety. And it is likely to be settled far from the moral high ground occupied in defeat by the BOA this week.

Ticketmaster fails to impress
London 2012 officials say that ticket sales have been strong in the 48 hours since Olympic football matches went back on sale, but faith in the system has not been helped by partners Ticketmaster.
In a press call at the weekend, a Ticketmaster executive offered no insight into why the system failed previously, and said those questioning what had gone wrong were “underestimating the scale of the challenge”. An odd answer given that appears to be precisely what Ticketmaster has done from the outset.

Royal host Duchess to attend fund-raiser
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have announced that they will attend the British Olympic Association’s gala dinner at the Royal Albert Hall on May 11. Ticket sales had been slow for the BOA’s final major fund-raiser before London 2012 but it is hoped the Kate effect will help to fill tables.

Read the rest of this entry »

NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) says stocks need to be 30% higher than normal by the start of the Games. The extra supplies are part of the contingency plans to cope with the extra visitors coming to the UK. There are also concerns that donations may drop off during large national celebrations like the Diamond Jubilee and other major sporting events.

'Perfect storm'
The situation has been described as a potential "perfect storm" of increased demand at the same time as falling The Olympics and Paralympics are expected to bring an extra 1.2m visitors to the UK. That will include 15,000 athletes from every part of the world.

During major sporting events or national holidays, blood stocks sometimes dip as regular donors forget to make appointments. Jon Latham, from NHSBT, told the BBC: "Every unit of blood saves or improves the life of three people. We obviously want to make sure everyone enjoys the Games, and want to make sure that if there are any accidents we have the blood supplies to help them recover quickly."

This summer presents a particular challenge for the blood service because of the unusual combination of events. There is an additional bank holiday for the Diamond Jubilee, as well as Wimbledon and football's European Championships. During big sporting events, the number of donations drops as people miss sessions to watch their favourite sports. That is why NHSBT is hoping to increase the supply of blood just before the Olympics. By starting with a high level of stock, they can allow it to taper back to normal reserves during the summer.

Each year 230,000 new donors are needed, so the appeal is partly aimed at getting people to think about signing up now rather than later in the year.

A lifesaving donation
Relatively little donated blood is used for treating people injured in accidents on the road or at work. Blood is needed for a wide range of medical situations, from women giving birth who lose blood to helping those undergoing surgery.

Lucia Sarsby, who is 11 years old, is a patient at Bristol Royal Infirmary, where she has received regular transfusions of red blood cells since she was a toddler. Lucia has a condition called beta thalassemia major, and is matter of fact about its consequences: "I can't make red blood and without it I would die."

Maintaining supplies to regular patients and also having enough reserves to cope with any contingency will present the blood service with a challenge.

Read the rest of this entry »