Facebook has announced a dedicated portal for London 2012 to allow fans to "connect with their favourite Olympians" at the Games.
The section features dedicated pages for athletes and sports, including a complete timeline history of the competition since the 1800s.
The IOC said the portal would create a "social media stadium".
However, restrictions on what athletes can or cannot post will restrict some content from being published.
Participants are subject to tight guidelines over content posted on Facebook and Twitter, particularly in relation to brands and broadcasting deals.
It restricts the posting of any video from within an Olympic venue.
'Ambush'Mark Adams, from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that while visitors to the Games would be able to post videos and stills, athletes' activities would be curbed.
“Start Quote
End Quote Boris BeckerIt's impossible to think all day and all night about the next match, interacting with fans is a good thing”
"It depends on where they are," he said.
"If they're in a stadium, they can't. We have a relationship with various broadcasters around the world which provides the funding [for the Games]."
In addition, he said, the IOC would be watching for any attempted "ambush" marketing.
"It's something we always have to keep in our mind," he said.
"It does take away money from the Olympic movement. It's something that we have to protect."
Facebook, which announced the portal at its central London offices, said it hoped the portal would mean Olympics fans could interact with athletes in a way that had not been possible in previous Games.
Alex Balfour, from the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) said there was now a "perfect storm" of technology to allow a "really rich experience" wherever fans were in the world.
"We want make sure our Games is available to that new audience of digital consumers," he added.
Facebook said it would allow fans to use the network to discover footage of their favourite athletes - but some content would be geo-targeted, meaning certain footage might not be available in certain regions of the world.
Mr Adams admitted that the IOC had been slow to adopt social networking, but was now ready to embrace it for London 2012.
"The way I like to think about the IOC and our relationship with social media is that the Olympics is one of the oldest social networks that has ever been.
"Everyone has an experience and shares that experience with their friends and their family - everyone has an emotional attachment to the Games. We're just digitising that experience."
Hot waterFormer world tennis number one and Olympic gold medallist Boris Becker told the BBC that using social media could help athletes prepare.
"It's very positive. It gives athletes the chance to get real opinions and real questions and to answer back.
"It's fun - everyone's online anyway. It's impossible to think all day and all night about the next match, interacting with fans is a good thing."
However, he warned that it was inevitable that some athletes might not think before they tweeted and so land themselves in hot water during the Games.
"The world and people are not perfect," he said.
"There will always be athletes who will take it out of line, but that doesn't mean that the platform is wrong."
'Bionic' woman who competed in the London Marathon will cycle from Paris to London for charity - Daily Mail
|
She captured the hearts of the nation when she miraculously crossed the finish line of the London Marathon by using bionic legs.
And now Claire Lomas plans to captivate Briton's once more - by cycling from Paris to London.
Despite not being able to move her legs she will cover the 250 mile ride on a special bike which uses electrical pulses to stimulate her muscles, forcing her to pedal.
Claire Lomas on her exercise bike at ;home in Melton, Mowbray. She is hoping to ride from Paris to London next Spring, despite being paralysed
Miss Lomas, who was left paralysed from the waist down following a horse-riding accident which severed her spinal cord, will once again be accompanied by her husband Dan.
'It is going to be really hard work but it is going to be very different to doing the marathon,' said the 31-year-old to the Sunday Telegraph. 'For the marathon I didn't have to be super fit as the pace was so slow in the robot.'
Miss Lomas, who is a mother to one-year-old Maisie, said she is concerned about not being able to tackle hills but has been using an indoor bike to train and is looking forward to being able to cycle outdoors.
In April this year she was joined by her husband, a research biologist, and tiny daughter for every step of the London Marathon, which took her two and a half weeks to complete.
Miss Lomas, of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, managed to raise more than 200,000 for Spinal Research and attracted world wide attention during the challenge.
Aching with pain and struggling to stay upright she crossed the finish line a gruelling 16 days after she first started.
Hundreds gathered to watch Claire as she completed her challenge in London
A delighted Claire, who was supported by her husband Dan all the way, plants a kiss on daughter Maisie
People across the country were outraged when organisers refused to honour her achievement with an official medal because she did not finish within 24 hours.
Instead, 14 of her fellow runners, who were so inspired by her efforts donated theirs.
Miss Lomas was overwhelmed by support during her efforts and said it inspired her to think of something else to do for charity.
Her legs will be strapped into the special Functional Electrical Stimulation Bike, which is actually a tricycle, and electrodes will be attached to her thighs and connected to an electrical stimulator.
A computer, activated with the push of a button, will control the muscles in her legs and cause them to produce a pedalling motion.
Claire, pictured in her wheelchair with Maisie, will use a special tricycle to help her complete the ride from Paris to London
A throttle in the handle will also manage the intensity of the stimulation and the speed of the pedalling.
As part of her training Miss Lomas will take part in an outdoor ride from Glasgow later this month and hopes to complete her challenge from Paris to London in the Spring of next year.
She has said that although she gets help with pedalling from the electrical stimulation, it is still tiring for her.
'The signals from my brain can't get down my spinal cord because of my injury so they don't reach my legs, so the pads put an electrical signal straight into the muscles to make them contract. They still need oxygen and it requires cardiovascular fitness,' she said.
New buyers may lift London art sales to $1 billion - Reuters UK
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - London's art market is attracting the lion's share of business from an emerging class of super-wealthy collectors from Russia, the Middle East and China, and they are likely to be a big factor in a summer season of sales valued at up to $1 billion (640 million pounds).
Christie's, Sotheby's and smaller rivals like Phillips de Pury hold a three-week series of auctions featuring works by artists as diverse as Rembrandt, Renoir and Gerhard Richter.
Euro zone turmoil and slowing Chinese economic growth are giving investors the jitters, yet the high-end art market has defied gravity on a record-breaking streak.
New York has long been considered the global capital of the auction world -- most recent records have been set there, including the $120 million paid for Edvard Munch's "The Scream" at a Sotheby's sale in May.
London, a more natural fit for Russian tycoons who have homes in the city and Middle Eastern buyers just a mid-haul flight away, may be closing that gap.
Sotheby's has calculated that, while the number of lots sold to buyers from "new" markets has risen in both cities so far this year, the increase has been far more marked in London (33 percent) than New York (six percent).
"Particularly the Russians feel very comfortable bidding in the London sales as many of them have second homes and are very active here," said Helena Newman, chairman of Sotheby's impressionist and modern art department in Europe.
"I think that because of our geographic situation, we are the gateway to the East ... Central Asia, the Middle East and the East," she told Reuters at the company's London headquarters where star lots from the upcoming sales were on display.
"We definitely see that in the sales of recent years. It is a growing trend."
BILLION-DOLLAR BONANZA?
Beyond bragging rights, auctioneers are not overly concerned with who buys what where. Key lots for sale in London come from the United States, for example, and the market overall has become more globalised.
One of the prize lots of the season is English artist John Constable's "The Lock", being offered by Christie's for 20-25 million pounds and the only one of a series of six important landscapes by the painter to be in private hands.
It goes under the hammer on July 3 and should eclipse the 10.8 million pounds raised when it was sold in 1990 - a British painting record it held for 16 years.
On the same night, Rembrandt's "A Man in a Gorget and Cap" is on course to raise 8-12 million pounds.
On Wednesday, a Renoir nude is set to fetch 12-18 million pounds and the next week the same auctioneer offers Yves Klein's "Le Rose du Bleu", estimated at 17-20 million pounds and Francis Bacon's "Study For Self-Portrait" (1964) (15-20 million).
Christie's, the world's largest auction house, expects to raise at least 310 million pounds from its sales of impressionist, modern, contemporary art as well as those of British paintings and Old Masters.
The upper estimate is closer to 500 million pounds, and combined with Sotheby's low target of 210 million pounds, a billion-dollar art bonanza looks within reach.
"The four week summer season of major international auctions at Christie's ... is set to become one of the richest and most valuable series of auctions in company history," said Jussi Pylkkanen, head of Christie's Europe.
MIRO RECORD IN SIGHT
At Sotheby's, the top work of the season could be Joan Miro's "Peinture (Etoile Bleue), valued at 15-20 million pounds and in sight of the artist record set this year of 16.8 million.
Its appearance so soon after the February record is no coincidence -- auction houses tailor sales to reflect the latest tastes, and the Miro, along with works by Henry Moore and Surrealist Paul Delvaux, all follow recent auction highs.
The prominence of large, colourful, figurative works at Sotheby's, including Kees van Dongen's "Lailla", Marc Chagall's "L'Arbre de Jesse" and Delvaux's "Deux Femmes couchees", also reflects emerging market tastes.
Soaring prices for coveted works of art at a time of global economic uncertainty have long prompted warnings of a sharp correction and even collapse, but time and again in the last three years the market has defied the gloomiest predictions.
There has been weakening in Chinese demand and tastes can be fickle, but the very best works of art have generally risen in value since a sharp but brief drop in auction turnover in 2009.
The contraction was as much a reflection of sellers backing away as of falling demand, experts say, and auction houses believe they are back in a "virtuous cycle" of rising prices in turn attracting the very best works on to the market.
Institutional acquisitions have also played a key role in the recovery, with Qatar emerging as one of the biggest buyers of art in recent years as it fills a growing network of museums.
Widespread reports said the Gulf state paid $250 million for Paul Cezanne's "The Card Players" in a private deal, believed to be the highest price ever paid for a work of art.
(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)
WHY? - RIchT, St Albans, 18/6/2012 8:06 - Health and safety won't let her on the Eurostar.
- Chris Allan, The Menagerie, 18/6/2012 11:58
Report abuse