But he had no qualms in admitting that Adcock and Bankier had simply been the best mixed doubles pair over the last 12 months.
“For neutral fans, it has been entertaining to see how the rivalry played out,” he said. “We had expectations going into qualifying but we didn’t just miss out in the end, we missed out by a long way.
“They fully deserved their place and I have already offered my support to the players and coaches in the build-up to the Games.”
Adrian Christy, Badminton England’s chief executive, said: “It is a sad day for the sport as he is arguably our greatest ever player, a one-off, super-talented individual.
“He is an infectious character and a brilliant role model. Our pool of talented players now need to aspire to his heights.”
Keeping in line with Christy’s view that former players should be rewarded for their services, Robertson is now likely to take up an ambassadorial role within the sport.
Robertson competed at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 before winning silver with long-time partner Gail Emms at the Athens Games in 2004.
Two years later, the pair won Commonwealth gold in Melbourne and then the world title in Madrid. He forged a partnership with Wallwork following Emms’ retirement at the last Olympics in Beijing.
London Symphony to pretend to play for Olympics ceremony - Los Angeles Times
Reports from Britain state that the orchestra will mimic playing to prerecorded music due to concerns about the weather and the shape of the performing venue -- a large, oval-shaped arena whose scale would apparently make a live-music performance tricky.
The ceremony, which is set to take place at the new Olympic Stadium, is being overseen by Oscar-winner Danny Boyle, who serves as artistic director for the massive event.
The London Symphony has reportedly recorded the music that is scheduled to be played during the July 27 ceremony. The Daily Mail reports that Boyle wanted the orchestra to perform live, but that he was overruled by the organizing committee for the Games.
When viewers around the world tune in for the ceremony, they can expect to see the conductor and musicians from the renowned orchestra going through the motions while a soundtrack plays.
This wouldn't be the first time that the mimicking of live music was used at an Olympics ceremony. In 2008, a mini-controversy developed during the Beijing Games when it was revealed that a 9-year-old singer lip-synced to the voice of another young girl whom officials had deemed less telegenic.
Similarly, at President Obama's inauguration, the musical performance by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriella Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill played, unamplified, to a recording. The decision to use a recording was made over fears that the cold weather that day could damage the instruments.
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London 2012 - Gay to return in New York - Yahoo! Eurosport
United States sprinter Tyson Gay will put aside the pain of a nagging hip injury and run his first race in nearly a year at this weekend's Adidas Grand Prix in New York as he scrambles to be fit for Olympic trials.
Gay will not race Jamaican world champion Yohan Blake in the featured 100 metres event, however, and will instead compete in a preliminary race at the Diamond League meeting.
"I still have a pain (in the hip area), but am managing it and I've got to get on with it," Gay told Reuters.
His Olympic trials are less than three weeks away, "and I've got to see where my body is," Gay said.
Although a pre-Olympic showdown with Blake, one of the favourites for the London 2012 Games, would be ideal, it would not be helpful to Gay at this point, the sprinter and his agent said.
"I am running in the B section because, competition wise, I am not ready yet," Gay said.
The separation will allow Gay to test himself without the pressure of racing the world champion, Gay's agent, Mark Wetmore, said from New York.
"It may not be ideal for everyone, with two athletes of that calibre in different races, but in an Olympic year we have to look after Tyson," Wetmore said.
"Blake, under the right conditions, could run 9.7. We don't know what Tyson can run. Hopefully he can have a great race and run 9.9."
Jamaican triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt has the year's fastest time at 9.76 seconds. His world record is 9.58 in 2009 with Gay the second fastest of all-time at 9.69 the same year.
The competition will be Gay's only race before the June 21-July 1 Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, where the 2007 double world champion will enter only the 100 metres.
"I am nervous (about New York) because I have high expectations for myself," Gay said. "I don't know what I can run, but my sprint coach (Jon Drummond) told me today he thought I could open decently."
Gay has not competed since pulling out of the 100 metres semi-final of the U.S. world championships trials in Eugene last June. He later had surgery on the hip and another procedure in March.
The often-injured 2009 world silver medallist only began sprint training three weeks ago.
"I usually open my season at a small meeting, but I decided in the past 48 hours to run in New York," he said.
London loses in sale of app firm - lfpress.com
Toronto will reap the rewards of a promising hi-tech business developed in London.
And the sale of the company called Carbyn is a warning that the city needs to build a stronger tech community or it will lose more companies, a startup expert says.
Carbyn is working on cloud-based software for apps carried on mobile devices.
Owner Jaafer Haidar sold Carbyn to Synacor of Buffalo for $1.1 million. Synacor is shifting the core function of the business to a Carbyn office in Toronto. Carbyn’s London office that employs eight people will remain open.
Carbyn has had difficulty finding employees in London.
“We have not seen a lot of quality resumes here in London,” Haidar said. “It pains me to say it, but we may not be able to do it here.”
But Haidar said he plans to stay in London and invest the proceeds from the sale in new software he’s developing.
For technology observers, the loss of Carbyn is a blow, but the most important thing is that Haidar, forging a reputation as one of London’s most innovative software executives, is staying.
“It’s a concern, but with Jaafer the thrill is in the chase and in building. The most important thing is we still have a person like Jaafer here,” said John Pollock, director of BizInc, the technology incubator at Western University.
Jaafer also sold digital scrapbooking software to the craft company Michael’s for $1.5 million in 2010.
norman.debono@sunmedia.ca
London exhibit in DC opened tonight, timed to Queen's Diamond Jubilee, Olympics - Examiner
The whole world is watching London during Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, and soon the Olympics, so it's a perfect time to see "Open City: London, 1500-1700", which opened tonight at Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library.
The free exhibit foreshadows the current fab four-day Diamond Jubilee in many ways, including centuries-old depictions and descriptions of St. Paul's Cathedral, where Queen Elizabeth will conclude her Diamond Jubilee celebrations on June 5.
Some comparisons can be made with the 1547 coronation of 9-year-old King Edward VI, who rode under a "golden canopy, dressed in silver and white velvet, amply garnished with rubies, diamonds, and pearls" to St. Paul's -- where "an acrobat slid down a rope anchored to the steeple...and performed tumbling exercises..."
An itemized bill from Great Britain's Office of the Revels shows charges for 46 tailors, some working "daies" and "nyghtes", to make elaborate garments for that royal event 465 years ago.
"We could have done this exhibition at any time, but we knew people would be paying particular attention to London this summer, and we wanted to show them 'our' London," said exhibition curator Kathleen Lynch, executive director of the Folger Institute.
"Their" London during the 200 year period between 1500 and 1700 experienced "explosive growth from a small, medieval city of 50,000 people, all within the city walls, to almost 500,000 people, one-quarter outside the walls," Lynch said in a walk-through today. She curated the show with Elizabeth (Betsy) Walsh, the Folger's head of reader services.
The exhibit traces the dramatic political, religious, and economic changes that reshaped London, from the dissolution of the monasteries, to plagues, civil wars, economic upheavals, to the rebuilding of the city after the Great Fire of 1666. The changes are tracked through three main gathering places—churches, theaters, and markets.
The earliest item is a 1493 edition of the "Nuremberg Chronicle", a world history, showing a woodcut of a "generic city", which the tome used to depict not only London, but at least three other cities.
"London wasn't worth its own woodcut," Lynch said with a smile, and then guided me to the exhibit's final map, showing "amazing growth in area, wealth, and power by 1690 when London is on the verge of creating a new empire."
The exhibit's story really begins when King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church in the 1530s and began the dissolution of the monasteries, most of which were headquartered in London. "Henry claims all wealth and property and doles it out to his cronies," Lynch commented, "while the City of London takes over charitable aspects like hospitals and orphanages."
Blackfriars, a Dominican monastery on the western side of the walled city, was turned into an "upscale residential community", with a renowned theater, and even the headquarters and warehouse for the Office of Revels, in charge of floats and other pomp for royal processions.
A mid-16th century Revels list of “moneye payd for stuf” cleared from a Blackfriars religious site, notes carting away “the great altar stone..." When Queen Mary, a Catholic, came to the throne, parishioners forced the Revels office to make restitution for the desecration.
Far more positive happenings in Blackfriars included performances of Shakespeare's "Othello", although written for the (less expensive and less intimate) Globe Theatre which opened in 1599, and Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist", among other major plays of the time.
One of the exhibit's most exciting items is Shakespeare's copy of the deed for a townhouse he purchased in Blackfriars. "We know that Shakespeare would have touched this; it's his copy, signed by the seller." Lynch said. The copy signed by Shakespeare, who was "known as a shrewd investor", is in London's Guild Hall Library.
Back then, both the seller's and the buyer's copy were made on one long piece of paper, and after the signing, the document would have been cut in two in wavy indentations. For verification of authenticity in any future transactions, the two copies would have to mesh exactly.
That explains the wavy indentures on the top of Shakespeare's deed, and on top of a much smaller contract near it, for a 9-year apprenticeship. Thus, the origin of "indentured", as in servitude. Would-be apprentices were "streaming into London, immigrants mainly from all parts of England," Lynch said, a main reason for the city's population explosion.
An exquisite engraving shows the coats of arms of all 60 chief trade and craft companies in London in 1596. At least half the men in London belonged to these companies through the 17th century.
Other highlights among the exhibition's some 100 items -- maps, diaries, books, letters, drawings, almost all from the Folger collection:
- A panoramic view of 1647 London by Wenceslaus Hollar, showing a flotilla along the Thames much like the June 3 Diamond Jubilee flotilla. Two decades after the etching was made, many of the buildings were destroyed by the 1666 Great Fire. The Hollar work has never before been exhibited.
- "Tittle-Tattle; Or, the several Branches of Gossipping", woodcut, circa1560–1600, depicts working women in the marketplace as mere "scolding sluts" in a derogatory poem and images.
- "Bills of Mortality" and other writings about the ravaging plague in 1965 and the Great Fire in 1966, which destroyed the greater part of London with the city walls. During 1665, there were 97,306 burials -- 68,596 due to the plague, "London's Dreadful Visitation".
- John Locke's "A Letter Concerning Toleration", 1689. Locke wrote, "Why are assemblies less sufferable in a church than in a theatre or market?" The Folger notes, however, that "Locke was not ahead of his time: he excluded Catholics and atheists from toleration."
One of the final items is the favorite of both curators Lynch and Walsh. A 1690 list of orphans and poor children -- educated for the British Navy at a math school built at the former Greyfriars monastery -- and their destinations, including New England, Virginia, and far beyond.
For more info: "Open City: London, 1500-1700". Free. On view from June 5 through September 30. Series of free talks on Mondays at 7 P.M., followed by a reception and viewing of the exhibition. Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC, 202- 544-4600.
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