The World Taekwondo Federation's (WTF) secretary general, Jean-Marie Ayer, has said GB Taekwondo did not follow official guidelines in its decision not to omit Cook.
Ayer says that one of the criteria in the guidelines for Great Britain's four host nation places is that athletes should be ranked in the world top 20 between May 2010 and April 2012. Cook has been in this category throughout, but Lutalo Muhammad, selected ahead of Cook, has never been in the top 20.
"We believe that our rankings are a non-subjective indicator of a player’s proven form over a period of time and potential competitiveness at future championships,” he told Sport Business. “The rankings are used to seed tournaments to separate the best proven players from each other until the latter stages.
“The WTF gave guidelines to the host nation – as they receive four host passes instead of qualifying by right – regarding the eligibility and profile of player we expected to be chosen to represent Great Britain at the Olympic Games. One of those guidelines was that the athlete should be ranked within the top 20 of the WTF rankings between the period May 2010 and April 2012.
"Aaron Cook has been ranked world number one for 13 months of this period and has never been outside of the top 20 at anytime.
"He is also again the provisional world number one or two for June 2012, the cut-off month which would honour him the number one or two seed at London 2012."
Meanwhile, the OQS panel has also concluded that British Wrestling has failed to meet the performance standard it had proposed and agreed with the BOA in 2011, meaning it will now only award one host nation qualification place, rather than the three proposed by British Wrestling.
Britain is entitled to three ‘host nation places’ at the Games but the BOA stipulated that athletes had to achieve at least one of several targets to ensure they were capable of a “credible performance” in London.
These were to finish in the top 16 at the World Championships, the top eight at the European Championships or European Olympic qualifying tournament or the top six at another international Olympic qualification tournament. No British athlete met the target.
The BOA has awarded the place in the women's under-55kg weight category, meaning Ukraine-born Olga Butkevych, who has only just received her UK passport, is likely to be the only British wrestler at the Games.
Vauxhall inks parts distribution deal with Norbert - Automotive Business Review
Vauxhall Motors has awarded a GBP1m contract to Norbert Dentressangle for the distribution of its parts further three years.
As per the deal, Norbert will be responsible for the overnight distribution of automotive parts to 300 Vauxhall and Chevrolet retailers throughout the UK.
The logistics firm will also collect orders from Vauxhall's parts distribution centre in Luton, UK for overnight delivery to retailers through its national shared-user network.
Norbert will also offer various services including waste management, sorting and management, yard services, site shunting and outbound loading.
Vauxhall Motors warehouse operations manager Peter Durham said that Norbert Dentressangle provides a transport solution that enables the company to maintain a high level of service to its retailers.
"This combined with the a range of added value site services means we will continue to benefit from a reliable and cost effective parts distribution operation," Durham said.
Norbert has been providing Vauxhall with aftersales parts distribution since 12 years, and with this contract extension it will offer services to 35 new trailers.
London 2012 could be first ever Paralympic Games to sell all its tickets - The Guardian
Paralympic officials say they are confident the London Games could become the first to completely sell out in the event's 52-year history, following another round of strong ticket sales.
More than 1.2m of the 2.2m tickets on offer for the 2012 Paralympics, which run from 29 August to 9 September, have already been sold, the bulk of them in a much-promoted initial sales window in September. Another 125,000 were sold last week.
"We're probably in the strongest position we've ever been in for ticket sales ahead of a Paralympics," said Craig Spence, head of communications for the Bonn-based International Paralympic Committee. "Our intention is that it would be great if we could sell out the Games. It's definitely possible; there's a real potential for us to do it.
"It would be amazing. Bear in mind that in Sydney 12 years ago they were still giving away a lot of tickets. Tickets being sold for a Paralympic Games is still a fairly new thing, so to sell all of them for full price would be pretty remarkable."
Adrian Bassett from the London organising committee, responsible for the ticket sales, said the scale of early sales had been unprecedented: "A sellout is certainly possible. When you look at previous Paralympics it's quite often during the Olympics or just before that people wake up to the Paralympic Games and there's a surge of ticket sales then. We're expecting to still be selling tickets quite close to the Games themselves."
Even if the Games opened with just a few remaining seats available it would be a significant achievement, both for the London Games and the wider acceptance of Paralympic sport by the public.
At most of the 15 summer Paralympics since the first event, in Rome in 1960, seats have been given away for free. Organisers of the 2000 Sydney Games sold 1.2m tickets in all, with a figure of 850,000 in Athens four years later. Beijing in 2008 saw more than 3.6 million people watch Paralympic events in all, but almost half of tickets were distributed by the Chinese government to schools and community groups. Even the 1.82m full-price tickets were relatively cheap, ranging from 30 to 80 yuan (about £3 to £8).
The London Paralympic prices remain competitive – aside from the opening and closing ceremony the highest figure is £45, while 75% cost £20 or less.
The interest in tickets has been prompted by a number of factors, Spence said, ranging from pre-Games coverage by Channel 4, which will broadcast the Paralympics, to the wider awareness of Paralympics sports in the UK. He said: "People are buying into the concept. British Paralympic athletes are far more well known, say compared to China. We're in a far stronger starting position here than we were going into the Beijing Games. Paralympic sport is probably more accepted in this country than in any other country in the world."
Interest has also been spurred by the likelihood of some home success: the British team won 42 golds in Beijing, and has come second in the medal table in the last three summer Games. Spence said: "Everyone buys into winners, but I think people are also just buying into the fact that it's elite sport. They know they're going to see some really competitive action. It's elite sport at its best."
Such has been the interest that London officials are at pains to point out that while some lower-capacity sports such as wheelchair tennis and wheelchair rugby have largely sold out, tickets remain for many sessions in the 80,000-capacity Olympic stadium and in the aquatics centre.
For example, tickets are still available for the evening session of 6 September, where the finals include the men's wheelchair 800m, with London marathon winner David Weir a favourite, fellow Briton Hannah Cockcroft going in the women's 200m wheelchair race, and the men's T44 100m sprint, where the field is headed by the Paralympian superstar Oscar Pistorius.
The latter race would most likely be more exciting than its Olympic equivalent, Spence predicted: "At the men's T44 100m in the world championships last year just 0.09 seconds separated the top four finishers. Then think of by how fair Usain Bolt usually wins his 100m."
London echoes to Dickensian footsteps - Reuters UK
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - Not far from the Olympic Park, a pub called The Grapes leans over the River Thames like "a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all."
It is hardly the image of sporting prowess but the place, conjured by Charles Dickens, underpins important historical context for the 2012 Games and a reality that endures.
The characters who visited this tavern "of dropsical appearance" in the 1860s novel "Our Mutual Friend", lived in the parts of London where 2012 will be staged, and included archetypes like the people in "The adventures of Oliver Twist" - young innocents and scoundrels living rough lives.
A few streets from the pub, beneath the docklands railway, Dickens scholar Tony Williams shows a reporter a trim terrace of whitewashed houses.
This part of London - Limehouse - was where Dickens' godfather, who made rigging for ships, had a home. When Charles came to visit he called in on a nearby lead mill that employed mainly women - poisoning some - a children's hospital, and various households.
Such places today are within sight of the pyramid-topped tower of London's financial powerhouse Canary Wharf, and attract valuations comparable to the financial district of Manhattan.
That puts them out of reach of most people, especially residents of the boroughs that are hosting the Games. Here, up to one in two children live in poverty, according to local council data.
Unemployment in Newham, one of the poorest boroughs, is nearly 45 percent - the highest rate in the country. Life expectancy is about two years below the UK average; Newham has Britain's highest rate of tuberculosis diagnoses.
London is full of memories of Victorian England, an era of dramatic extremes of wealth and poverty. A short walk through east London in the company of Dickens brings to mind a world whose poverty and squalor the author exposed more than 150 years ago; poverty which has only partially been redressed.
HALLSVILLE CESSPOOLS
In Dickens' time, east London was foul. The Metropolitan Building Act of 1844 had pushed toxic industries like leather tanning, varnish-making and gas works to the east.
There was also a big problem with sewage. Olympics spectators who walk a route known as the Greenway to get to the Park will stride over the solution to that. The path is part of a network that was finally constructed after the stench became intolerable in parliament.
At Canning Town, a couple of train stops south of Olympic Park, the area's potential collides with a Dickensian past. It is still the poorest part of Newham.
In 1857 the slum featured in "Household Words", a weekly journal that Dickens edited and published. Part of the low-lying area was known as Hallsville.
"It is a district ... most safely to be explored on stilts," the journal says. A clergyman "once lost his shoes in the mud while visiting Hallsville, and did not know that they were gone till some time afterwards; so thickly were his feet encased in knobs of mud."
On a drier day, the main characteristic of the place was its cesspools, undrained and pestilential, in the backyards of cheap terraced houses.
"In one of the backyards, three ghostly little children lying on the ground, hung with their faces over it, breathing the poison of the bubbles as it rose, and fishing about with their hands in the filth for something - perhaps for something nice to eat."
Dickens was a radical, Williams says.
"The greatest thing he hated to see was people being indifferent or just ignorant about where there was a need to be met - and particularly where that affected children."
When Dickens was a child, education of any kind was only for the privileged: he spent several years roaming the streets, and had to work in a boot-polish factory when his father was jailed for debts.
COCKROACH AND CARPET
Emerge from Canning Town station today and the whiff is more likely one of tar from a passing truck carrying material to a building site. As you head for Hallsville, a newly built apartment block rises opposite a disused transport depot marked for regeneration.
But housing remains a problem. In 2009 almost one in five households in Newham was overcrowded - having at least one room less than needed. Around half were below the standard known as Decent, and many are privately owned and rented out for more than they are worth.
"Something nice to eat" can still be hard to come by, especially fresh fruit and vegetables. Shops selling only frozen or dried goods survive better in poor areas, and in Newham, the lowest-paid earned less than anywhere else in London in 2007-9.
"We talk about a 'food desert' in some areas," said Rachel Laurence, who works with a child poverty network for the charity Save the Children.
Hallsville Primary School still exists. On a rainy April morning, a teacher leads a class past green fields out through spiky metal gates, on their way to a swimming lesson.
"Wowee what a fannetastic school," reads a review on Google maps. The school was rated "outstanding" by the British schools inspector in 2008.
Inside, one of the first sights are more than 30 trophies and plaques for sports, and large brightly coloured models of London landmarks. A bicycle wheel stuck with knobs like those used on cupboard doors represents the millennium wheel in Westminster.
The plaque commemorating a cheerleading prize says "Be the best you can be."
Keri Edge, who has been head teacher for 12 years, says just over half of the 450 or so pupils are eligible for free school meals - a measure of poverty.
Problems they contend with are broken homes, overcrowding, a lack of routine, broken sleep patterns, poor diet, and a lack of human contact because relatives spend too much time on smart phones or tech toys.
Edge finds it charming that Dickens knew about her school. But she wants to emphasise how modern children can be deprived whether or not they are poor, particularly if they are left "with just a Wii for company".
The classrooms hum with calm activity. In the nursery, a boy and a girl measure minutes with sand timers. In the corridors, the pupils move from class to class in silent crocodiles. "Lovely manners," the teachers say. The 10-year olds are working on a story. One has written of "a melodious sombre composition so sweet it would turn a devil into an angel."
Around the corner, just outside the school fence, is a burned-out car.
(Editing by Peter Rutherford)
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