Great Britain have named 48 rowers in the squad for the London Olympics, with four places still to be decided.
Remaining selections in the men's and women's eights will be finalised "in due course", said a Team GB statement.
Katherine Grainger“There is a sense that the upcoming home Games will be on a different scale to anything we've ever seen before”
Britain will compete in 13 of the 14 rowing events at Eton Dorney, with the men's four and men's lightweight double scull defending titles.
The host nation hopes to improve on the record haul of six medals that saw them top the rowing medals table in Beijing.
"We go to the start in London ready to defend our status as the leading rowing nation from Beijing but we are under no illusion as to how tough winning medals, especially gold medals, will be at this Games," said David Tanner, GB Rowing Team performance director.
As expected, Andrew Triggs Hodge, Tom James, Pete Reed and Alex Gregory will attempt to win a fourth consecutive gold medal for Britain in the men's four, following in the footsteps of Sir Steve Redgrave, Sir Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell among others.
The crew have won both World Cup races this year but were pushed hard by Australia in Lucerne last time out.
"I'm thrilled to be part of the biggest British team ever at our London Olympics," said Reed.
"I have been training for this all my life one way or another. I am a proud lieutenant from the Royal Navy, a proud Olympian and a proud Briton. I'm racing to win."
Anna Watkins and Katherine Grainger are firm favourites in the women's double scull, with Scot Grainger looking to win a first gold after taking silver at the last three Games.
Britain row to Beijing glory
"It's been an incredible honour and privilege to be part of the past three Olympic Games and, as wonderful as they have all been, there is a sense that the upcoming home Games will be on a different scale to anything we've ever seen before," said Grainger.
World and Olympic champions Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter will defend their men's lightweight double scull title, while Helen Glover and Heather Stanning are currently the world-leading women's pair.
Greg Searle will get the chance to go for gold in the men's eight 20 years after he won the coxed pairs title in tandem with his brother Jonny and tearful cox Garry Herbert in Barcelona.
Searle, 40, returned to the sport in 2010 having last competed at an Olympics in Sydney 12 years ago.
Only seven rowers have been named in the men's eight, leaving the door open for Constantine Louloudis to be named as stroke despite having missed both of this year's World Cup regattas with a back injury.
A world under-23 champion, it is hoped Louloudis could give Britain the edge after they pushed world champions Germany hard in Belgrade and Lucerne over the last month.
Ten rowers have been named for the women's eight, with selectors likely to use the upcoming Munich World Cup to assess their options once again before making the final decision.
Team GB rowing squad:
Men's Pair - George Nash, Will Satch
Men's Four - Alex Gregory, Tom James, Pete Reed, Andrew Triggs Hodge
Men's Eight * - Richard Egington, James Foad, Matthew Langridge, Alex Partridge, Tom Ransley, Mohamed Sbihi, Greg Searle, Phelan Hill (cox)
* one further rower will be added at a later date
Men's Single Scull - Alan Campbell
Men's Double Scull - Bill Lucas, Sam Townsend
Men's Quadruple Scull - Charles Cousins, Stephen Rowbotham, Tom Solesbury, Matthew Wells
Women's Pair - Helen Glover, Heather Stanning
Women's Eight * - Jo Cook, Jessica Eddie, Katie Greves, Lindsey Maguire, Natasha Page, Louisa Reeve, Emily Taylor, Victoria Thornley, Annabel Vernon, Olivia Whitlam, Caroline O'Connor (cox)
* Eight from the ten rowers listed will be confirmed as racing in the eight. The two rowers not racing in the eight will be selected as reserves.
Women's Double Scull - Katherine Grainger, Anna Watkins
Women's Quadruple Scull - Debbie Flood, Frances Houghton, Beth Rodford, Melanie Wilson
Lightweight Men's Four - Chris Bartley, Peter Chambers, Richard Chambers, Rob Williams
Lightweight Men's Double Scull - Mark Hunter, Zac Purchase
Lightweight Women's Double Scull - Katherine Copeland, Sophie Hosking
London 2012: Organisers to release more tickets for opening ceremony - The Sport Review
London 2012 organisers are releasing a further batch of tickets for the previously sold-out Olympic opening and closing ceremonies – but the cheapest available seat will be £995.
In addition, they are making further contingency seats available in athletics, swimming, football at Wembley, volleyball, table tennis and boxing, priced between £20 and £720.
Tickets will go on sale on a first come, first served basis on the London 2012 ticketing website from 11am this Friday.
Organisers Locog have also confirmed that eight million tickets have now been sold for both the Olympics and Paralympics – under two thirds of the total available.
Just over half a million non-football Olympic tickets are still available, while under 50 percent of the 2.5 million available inventory of Paralympic tickets remains unsold.
But the biggest concern for organisers will be the seemingly sluggish sale of football tickets.
After the recent draw at Wembley, 1.4 million seats went on general sale but only 150,000 have been shifted in the last month – leaving 1.25 million still available.
Last month organisers admitted that only 10,000 tickets had been shifted for the opening event of the Games, when, two days before the opening ceremony, Team GB’s women footballers take on New Zealand at the 74,500 capacity Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
“With 50 days to go there are still plenty of ways to join in and be part of London 2012. We are at advanced stages of venue planning and these represent the final release of Ceremonies and other sport tickets,” said Locog commercial director Chris Townsend.
“Over the next few weeks we will release further tickets for other Olympic sports and keep people informed when tickets are available.
“We are delighted with ticket sales to date, and have sold another one million tickets in the last four weeks, prioritising people who were unsuccessful last time around.” 
London 2012 ticketing breakdown
London 2012 Olympics: 7 million sold, 1.8m still available (including 1.25m football)
London 2012 Paralympics: 1.25 million sold, 1.2m still available
Vauxhall buff Alisdaire completes drive of his dreams - thesouthernreporter.co.uk
IT took Selkirk veteran car enthusiast Alisdaire Lockhart 22 years of painstaking work to recreate the famous Prince Henry Vauxhall, writes Andrew Keddie.
But all that toil and attention to meticulous detail paid off in spades last week when Alisdaire fulfilled a lifelong ambition by driving his remarkable vehicle on a 620-mile journey through rural Sweden.
In so doing, he emulated the feat of Vauxhall’s legendary founding managing director Percy Kidner and celebrated in style the centenary of the model’s participation in the inaugural Great Swedish Winter Reliability Trial of 1912.
Back in April, we told the story of Alisdaire, who lives in the town’s Ettrick Terrace, as he prepared for his date with destiny.
Only 60 21-horsepower, three-litre Prince Henry models – widely acknowledged as the first British sports cars to exceed 100mph – were ever manufactured by Vauxhall and only a handful exist today.
In 1988, Alisdaire, at that time resident in Bedfordshire and a passionate afficionado of the famous UK motoring marque, set his sights of following in the tyre tracks of Kidner 100 years on.
Using original parts specially transported from Australia, he began the re-creation of the famous model, finally completing the task in Selkirk, where he relocated five years ago. And his dream of taking part in the commemorative centenary reliability trial in Sweden, organised by the Kungliga Automobil Klubb (KAK), has finally come true.
Having travelled with his prized vehicle on the ferry from Harwich, Alisdaire lined up for the first day of the trial at the Tjoloholm Rally, south of Gottenburg, on Sunday, May 20.
He told us: “The following morning, we drove along the southern route of the original event, through Jonkoping and Linkoping, arriving in Stockholm on the Tuesday for a reception at the KAK headquaters where the car was photographed with the original trophies for the event. Thereafter, the car was driven back to Gotheburg by the northern route for the return to the UK on Saturday, May 27.
“On the commemorative run, I was accompanied by Kay Mordza of the Svenska Vauxhall Register, who was a great help with all the arrangements in Sweden, and my co-driver Andrew Duerden of the Vauxhall Heritage Centre in Luton.
“In total, we covered 620 miles in 22 hours of driving time spread over four days. With the open roads and low volume of traffic in Sweden, it was easy to cruise at 55-60mph without any mechanical trouble, with fuel consumption of around 30 miles per gallon.
“To my immense pride and pleasure, my Prince Henry, now safely back in its garage in Selkirk, proved a nimble little runner and was great fun to drive with easy gear changes and a lively performance.
“It must have been very impressive in its heyday of just over 100 years ago.”
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Print this pageLondon 2012: torchbearers picked by sponsors keep flame of commerce alive - The Guardian
Throughout their descriptions of the 70-day Olympic torch relay, the London 2012 organisers talked of having tracked down "8,000 truly inspirational people from across the UK". But while most of the torchbearers were picked through this process, some people – including one of the world's richest men – managed to get on the torch relay by another means: working for, or being affiliated with, one of the London 2012 sponsors.
More than 1,200 spaces were allocated to the International Olympic Committee, the British Olympics Association, and to staff working for Games sponsors – whose picks included company directors, Russian newspaper editors, and even an official at the US's Food and Drug Administration.
Help Me Investigate the Olympics, a crowdsourced news coverage site dedicated to London 2012, looked into torchbearer slots handed out by one particular sponsor, Adidas.
While, generally, slots had been given to junior or mid-level employees, Adidas had also selected Christos Angelides, the £900,000-a-year senior director at Next, which has a retail partnership with Adidas covering the Olympics. Other Adidas slots went to people in the marketing team who had worked on the company's sponsorship.
The group's findings, posted by Paul Bradshaw, also noted descriptions of staff's work performance in their nominating stories, mentioning that one torchbearer had "made a fantastic contribution to the Adidas group business". Another "breathes Adidas … Her positive attitude and 'money in [the] till' approach is legendary" and a third mentioned "achieving my sales targets in every market I have worked in".
A spokesman for Adidas said the firm was restricted by Locog rules and could only offer its torchbearer slots to employees or those in its network. He added that owing to the low average age of the company's staff, not many of their children were old enough to carry the torch.
Other sponsors struck further afield for their choices: among Coca-Cola's selections were the Las Vegas resident Dr Debra Toney, who among other roles sits on a committee of the US's Food and Drug Administration.
Coca-Cola also selected Evgeny Faktorovich, the deputy editor-in-chief of a Russian paper that "supports all social initiative held by Coca-Cola" and Vonta Vontobel, the president of the Brazilian Bottlers Association of Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola, as an official torchbearer partner, was able to allocate places to members of the public – it was responsible for allocating 1,350 slots.
"Over 90% of our allocation has gone to members of the public through our Future Flames campaign, which celebrates inspirational people by giving them the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to carry the Olympic flame," said a spokesman. "A small number of our allocation has been given to some of our employees through a nomination campaign, and to our campaign ambassadors who have helped to find our Future Flames. Our remaining places have been given to our partner organisations and their affiliates."
ArcelorMittal, another organisation supporting the Olympics, was given six torchbearer slots. Two of these went to the company's founder, Lakshmi Mittal, the world's 21st richest man according to Forbes magazine, and his son Aditya, the group's chief financial officer. Among the others, however, were the US technician Angel Alvarez, who donated his kidney to a fellow worker, and Polish employee Filip Kuzniak, who cycled 600km to raise money for a colleague's daughter.
Among 50 torchbearers selected by BP were Gillian James, a member of the company's North Sea leadership team, and Carl Halksworth, the creative director of Landor, BP's design agency partner for the Olympics. As BP sponsored a particular section of the route, near Aberdeen, the remainder of its picks were made up predominantly of "onshore and offshore BP staff, young relatives of staff, business partners, and nominees from local schools, universities and charities".
The electricity giant EDF, meanwhile, included the group's former director of HR and communications among the 71 staff members chosen to carry the torch on the company's behalf.
A London 2012 spokesman said: "Staging the Olympic Games is a huge undertaking and we couldn't do it without the support from our commercial partners. The rights packages for some partners include a small number of torchbearer places that had to be filled through internal campaigns.
"The same torchbearer selection criteria applied across the whole relay – ie personal bests and/or contribution to the community."
London 2012 Olympics: David Millar faces battle to earn place with Team GB - Daily Telegraph
Millar, presently competing at the Critérium du Dauphiné, has endured an injury-disrupted season after breaking his collarbone and a bone in his hand racing in Belgium at the end of March.
Although his track record with GB is excellent and Cavendish has always insisted he wanted Millar in the team regardless of any BOA selection issues, the Scot badly needs to offer compelling evidence of fitness and form before being given the nod because GB have several viable options. With time running out, that effectively leaves Millar with a four-day race in Holland from June 9-17 and the first week of the Tour de France during which to impress.
Much the same goes for Steve Cummings - a powerhouse domestique and a key man at the World Championships last year - who is also returning from injury and Ben Swift, whose switch from the track programme to the road six weeks ago has been hampered by a shoulder injury after he crashed in training with Team Sky ahead of the Giro d’Italia.
Swift is embarking on a busy road programme with Sky and, although he might not feature in their Tour de France plans, the world scratch-race champion could force his way into the squad. If anything happened to Cavendish during the road race at the Games - a crash, mechanical or problems on the Box Hill climbs - he represents a potential Plan B with his climbing ability and sharp turn of speed The GB long list of eight will include obvious starting selections such as Cavendish and Wiggins as well as Chris Froome, back to health, and Ian Stannard, a stalwart worker for Cavendish at the recent Giro and in the form of his life. When naming the final five, Brailsford and the GB road coach Rod Ellingworth have strong candidates to fill the Millar role should he not regain his best form.
The veteran Jeremy Hunt, a lead-out specialist that Cavendish rates highly, could come into the equation, although the feeling is that if the Olympic race finishes in a sprint it will be contested by a relatively small bunch. The need for a pure lead-out man might not be paramount.
Just getting Cavendish to the final one-kilometre is the priority. He has proved many times, not least this season, that he can take it on from there alone if necessary.
Meanwhile, the competition for places in the women’s team is so strong that again British Cycling and the BOA will announce a squad of six squad rather than the four-rider team they must confirm on July 6. Lizzie Armitstead has been the stand-out rider all season, while reigning Olympic champion Nicole Cooke and Emma Pooley, a silver medal winner in the time-trial at Beijing, have been less consistent although Pooley did claim a fine win, her first of the season, at the Emakumeen Saria race in Spain on Tuesday. Sharon Laws, Katie Colclough and Lucy Martin are also well in contention.
As with the men, the time-trial entrant - probably Pooley - has to come from the final four. The National Championship later this month could be the most important race in the selection process.
On an Olympic course that could suit both the sprinters and breakaways, the decision on whether Armitstead or Cook is the protected rider could be delayed until the day of the race. Armitstead’s form puts her in a strong position.
On the track, the only real issue likely to occupy the selection panel is whether the sole place in the individual sprint should go to reigning champion Sir Chris Hoy or to Jason Kenny, who has placed higher than Hoy at the past two World Championships, taking gold and silver. The selectors might again tarry - their only requirement before the Games is to name the men’s team sprint squad - though the memory of Hoy decimating the world’s best sprinters at the World Cup meeting at the London Velodrome could well hold sway.
World’s fastest street legal car smashes speed record at 250mph…. but it’s a Vauxhall Vectra that cost £60 - Daily Mail
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The British maker of the world’s fastest street legal car has smashed a world speed record covering a quarter of a mile in just over six seconds.
Andy Frost’s vehicle can clock an incredible 250mph and will take the driver from 0-60 in under ONE second.
He bought the red Vauxhall Victor for just 60 in 1980 and has gone on to transform it into the world’s speediest street legal car - complete with MOT to prove it.
Andy Frost with his pride and joy, a suped up Vauxhall Victor, bought in 1980 for just 60
On Saturday Frost took the current record from an American completing a quarter of a mile in 6.59 seconds at a speed of 220mph at the finish line.
Frost, from Wolverhampton, said: 'It has been an on going 29-year project, but it is never going to be complete - I’m always trying to improve it.
'I’ve spent almost 4,000 a year on this car since I bought it second hand. I have slowly improved it bit by bit in my spare time.
'It is a bit like Triggers broom in Only Fools and Horses - I’ve changed so many parts that it has has evolved into a super car from just a bog standard Vauxhall with nothing done to it.
On Saturday it became the world's speediest street legal car, completing a quarter of a mile in 6.59 seconds at a speed of 220mph at the finish line
'It is hardly recognisable from the the car I first bought. I have sacrificed having a holiday each year to spend the money on the car instead.
'I don’t ever go to the pub or spend money on other trivial things like that - I just plough it all back into improving the car.
'It has been a life long dream to be able to say I own the world’s fastest street legal car. it makes all the hard work worthwhile, but I won’t stop tinkering with it even now.'
The car's engine is a powerful V8 engine combined with two turbos lifted from a large digger to help it reach its top speed
The 50-year-old, who runs Penn Autos in Wolverhampton, has devoted over 1,600 hours to painstakingly crafting the sports car in his garage.
It weighs a hefty 1,200kg due to the modifications, and is estimated to have cost Andy over 100,000 in total.
When on the drag strip it can zoom from 0-220mph in 6.5 seconds, and comes complete with a parachute to help slow it down.
Under the bonnet a powerful V8 engine combined with two turbos lifted from a large digger give it enough boost to reach its top speed in a matter of seconds.
Andy Frost has spent more than 20 years and 100,000 to make his car a record-breaker
Despite the car being geared to racing, he still uses the car as a run around every so often.
'It is just like a normal car when you drive it on the roads - it handles easily around the corners and isn’t tricky to drive like many people think.But on the track it goes like a rocket.
'I used to take my three lads to school in it. They loved it obviously as they were the envy of all their friends. Everyone would stop and stare as we roared up in it.
The car comes with its own tongue-in-cheek speed guide
London hotels 'pricing themselves out of market' - The Guardian
London's ugliest buildings: our readers' choice - Daily Telegraph
The Queen Elizabeth conference centre offends my eyes and the Shell building on the South Bank is equally brutal.
Martin Bartlett, by email
I know most of the buildings featured: it appears that you have chosen the some of the largest projects in recent history? In terms of the Blue Fin, you should go and have a look at what used to be there. And UCL Hospital? Surely Guys Hospital should be there instead?
Martin Garthwaite, by email
The One New Change shopping centre in the City would be my choice for inclusion in London’s ugliest buildings. Not for nothing is it referred to as “the turd”.
Bob Thompson, by email
Most modern buildings are just meaningless, incongruous, dysfunctional shapes, which date with amazing rapidity. If it’s not going to look good still in 500 years; don’t build it.
John Armstrong, by email
The Shard without a doubt is one of the ugliest buildings in London. The first view I had of this monstrosity was crossing the Thames when coming from Gatwick Airport. To me it looked like a giant prophylactic.
Why do all these buildings have to stick out like a sore thumb? Isn't it about time there were height restrictions? There should also be rules about modern "architecture" (if that is what they want to call it) complementing the surroundings in which they are being built.
S Cook, by email
I would add Portcullis House. Dark brown is seldom a good colour for a building and this is no exception.
Robert Cook, by email
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