London to Brighton bike ride attracts 27,000 cyclists - BBC News
More than 27,000 cyclists are taking part in the 54-mile London to Brighton bike ride in aid of the British Heart Foundation.
Riders set off from Clapham Common from 06:00 BST, with the first arriving at the finish just before 09:00.
The toughest part of the ride is the climb up 813ft (247m) Ditchling Beacon just outside Brighton, which takes an average of 15 minutes to scale.
The event, which is now in its 37th year, has raised more than £50m.
Among the riders taking part was Toby Field from Eastbourne, also known as the Fat Cycle Rider, who has lost 8st 14lb in weight since taking up cycling.
His father died from a weight-related heart attack at the age of 55, and Mr Field said after his father's death he was in denial about his own health problems.
"I wanted a cheap bike so I could ride around the park with my kids. I was walking and they were leaving me behind. That's where it all started."
Road closures have been in place along the route out of London, through the boroughs of Reigate and Banstead and Tandridge in Surrey and through Sussex into Brighton.
Southern Railway and First Capital Connect do not allow bikes to be carried on trains on race day, but a park and ride service operates between Brighton Racecourse and Madeira Drive.
Bus services have been redirected and Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach company said the A23 into Brighton was gridlocked at about midday because of the race.
London Olympics: Leander Paes ready to go by selectors' choice - indiatoday.intoday.in
Leander Paes on Saturday said that he is ready to partner whosoever is chosen by the selectors as "Olympics is my greatest honour." Breaking his silence after Mahesh Bhupathi accused him of "backstabbing," Paes said who he partners at the London Games was not the most important issue for him.
The All India Tennis Association (AITA) has stuck to its decision to pair the two veterans while the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) has asked for a report in the matter.
"Winning a medal at the Atlanta Olympics is the most cherished memory I have in my tennis career. To play for our flag, and represent India for the sixth time at the Olympics, is my greatest honour. I will, as I always have in the past, put my best foot forward," said Paes.
Paes, India's top doubles player ranked seventh in the world, refused to react to Mahesh Bhupathi's stinging statements. "I have no reaction to the recent statements made by Mahesh Bhupathi to the media.
I have always maintained that I will play with whoever the selection committee and AITA choose and this continues to be my stand," Paes said.
The 38-year-old player, who had the right to state his preference of partner for the Games, made it clear that he wanted to play with Rohan Bopanna, but said he would not mind combining with his estranged partner Bhupathi. "When asked by the AITA, I expressed my preference to play with Rohan Bopanna as my partner in the Olympics 2012, based on his physical fitness and big serve."
The issue of India's tennis entry for the London Olympics snowballed into a row after AITA chose Paes and Bhupathi as India's sole representatives in men's doubles.
Bhupathi, who paired up with Bopanna in January with the London Olympics in mind, has maintained that he will not partner Paes as he and Bopanna have qualified as a pair.
"It does not help to shoot one's mouth off like this," Rohit Rajpal, one of the selectors told Mail Today, on the outburst by Bhupathi and Bopanna. "They should have shown a bit more maturity, discuss things and think about the country. People do come together to rise to the occasion. We thought about all options before taking this decision. As of now, we do not know how it will unfold. We hope things calm down and they will think a little bit."
Asked about their options if Bhupathi refuses to change his stance, Rajpal said "We can then ask Bopanna to partner Leander.
AITA chief Anil Khanna said that the federation will stand by its decision. "If Bhupathi expects AITA would buckle under pressure and refuses to pair up with Paes, he should know that it will not happen," he said.
"It will have to be Leander and Mahesh. Olympics is a different ball game and tougher than a Grand Slam and wealth of experience that the duo has would keep them in good stead in crunch and pressure situation".
Meanwhile, IOA supremo VK Malhotra has asked for a report on the issue. "Tennis is one of the sports which can fetch us a medal in the Olympics," Malhotra told Mail Today. "I have asked Anil Khanna for a report which he has promised to give in a day or two. We will have to look at all the possibilities like whether we can send one team or two."
London 2012 Olympics: Britain's women shine at World Cup but Australians again edge out men's four - Daily Telegraph
The world-best time that they had established in Lucerne only three weeks earlier suddenly seemed half a lifetime ago.
“We’re not a world-record crew any more, we’re a silver-medal crew,” Andy Triggs-Hodge, their stroke man, argued with admirable realism.
“Every time we go out on the water now, the Australians will be half a length in front of us. If we are not fighting to beat them, then we have a silver at the Games. I’m not going to do that.”
What counts in the four’s favour is the notoriously intensive Austrian training camp for which they now embark. Jürgen Grobler, the men’s head coach, is famous for extracting every last drop of energy from his athletes at the remote Alpine base of Silvretta, and it is likely that the sweat shed there could help to avert another dip on Eton’s Dorney Lake.
Grobler could not have drawn much pleasure from this latest set of races as neither Alan Campbell, the single sculler from Northern Ireland, nor the men’s eight managed to capitalise on the withdrawal of their leading rivals.
Campbell, an explosive talent at his best, ought to have secured gold in the absence of both New Zealand’s Mahé Drysdale and Ondrej Synek of the Czech Republic, the two favourites to win in London, but trailed home a distant third.
“I put my foot down and there was no power there,” the 23 year-old admitted. “If I had raced that hard in the past I would have ended up in a body bag, rather than in the bronze-medal position.”
Equally, the eight should have risen to the top of the rostrum without world champions Germany in the line-up, but were relegated to bronze by inspired races from Poland and Australia. On this evidence, the return to the stroke seat of Constantine Louloudis, the prodigiously gifted Oxford gap-year student ruled out with a back injury, cannot come fast enough.
“If the eight hadn’t been the last race, I would have had a slightly better feeling,” David Tanner, Britain’s performance director, said. “I’d like to be a little more chipper.”
What consoled Tanner last night was the recollection that for all Grobler’s phenomenal Olympic success, none of his crews had won their last race before a Games since 1988. Even Sir Steve Redgrave endured a turbulent build-up to his record fifth gold in Sydney in 2000, when his four came only fourth in their final World Cup contest. But it was the enigma of Mark Hunter and Zac Purchase, who stuttered to a second successive sixth place in the lightweight men’s double, which threatened to take the coaches longer to unravel.
The duo are Olympic champions but were woefully off the pace here, crossing the line last in their ‘A’ final, just as they had in Lucerne. “We had the speed, but I don’t think we had the fitness,” Hunter said.
At least the men’s quadruple sculls and women’s eight, who won surprise bronzes, provided some late comfort ahead of the 40 days and 40 nights that remain until the squad’s defining date in London.
London 2012: Tasha Danvers gives up dream of competing at Olympics - The Guardian
Britain's Tasha Danvers, the bronze medallist in the 400m hurdles at the Beijing Olympics, has retired after conceding defeat in her battle to be fit for the London 2012 Games. The 34-year-old has suffered a series of injuries and ahead of the preliminary squad announcement for the Games this week Danvers, from south London, has quit.
"It's extremely disappointing not to be able to put myself into contention for selection for London 2012," she said. "Based on my training at different stages my coach and I believed we had a genuine chance of making it. But the setbacks have been too many to overcome.
"Since winning Olympic bronze in Beijing I have made so many sacrifices to fulfil my dream of competing in London. Making the decision to relocate back to the UK meant leaving my seven-year-old son behind in America, which is the hardest thing in the world to do. But we genuinely believed I could step on to that podium again and with the support of my family, [coach] Malcolm Arnold, UKA, the medical team and the National Lottery, I've done everything possible to try to achieve that. Sadly my body has had enough."
Danvers, who also won Commonwealth Games silver in 2006 – less than 18 months after giving birth to her son – has made every final she has contested since 2004.
Arnold said: "This is the worse possible news for Tasha but there is no doubt she has thrown everything at trying to make London. She is an Olympic medallist and that pedigree doesn't just disappear. I was confident that if we could get her to the Games she would have been very competitive.
"This is the flipside of the Olympic dream but career-ending injuries are a fact of life at this level of sport. Our medical team have worked incredibly hard but sometimes the body knows best."
Great Britain's head coach Charles van Commenee added: "We don't have too many current Olympic medallists in our team and in an ideal world they would all be with us in London. Tasha knows what it takes to be competitive and make the podium, which would have been a huge advantage. Retirement is a hard decision for any athlete but when the decision is taken out of your hands so close to an Olympic Games, it must be even tougher. I wish Tasha all the very best."
London 2012: IOC begins Olympics tickets investigation - BBC News
The International Olympic Committee has begun an investigation into claims Olympics representatives were willing to sell thousands of tickets for the London Games on the black market.
The IOC's ruling executive board met after fresh claims by the Sunday Times involving more than 50 countries.
Tickets for top events were said to be priced at up to 10 times face value.
A UK member of the board, Sir Craig Reedie, said the IOC would consider improvements to ticket sales systems.
"We will see what improvements we can build in to a more modern system, because it's very important that we protect the integrity of the ticket distribution system for Olympic games," he told the BBC.
The IOC has also referred the allegations to its independent ethics commission.
Former LibDem leader Sir Menzies Campbell, a member of the Olympic Board, called for offending countries to lose future allocations of tickets.
He said it was the responsibility of the IOC to regulate ticket allocations to member countries and was "not at the discretion of the London organisers".
The UK's Olympics organiser, Locog, denied claims its chairman, Lord Coe, was persuaded to hand over extra tickets to an IOC national representative.
The Sunday Times has submitted a dossier of evidence detailing claims that Olympic officials and agents had been caught selling thousands of tickets on the black market for up to 10 times their face value, says BBC Sports News correspondent James Pearce.
The IOC could also review how Olympic tickets are distributed among member countries - more than one million were distributed to those taking part in the Games.
Sir Menzies Campbell, a former Liberal Democrat leader who is on the Olympic Board, - which helps oversee London 2012 - told the BBC it was a "thorough disgrace".
"The sanctions [for offending countries] should be not just that the tickets get cancelled for this Olympic Games but that tickets are not awarded on future occasions," he added.
The Sunday Times alleges, during a two-month investigation in which reporters posed as Middle Eastern ticket touts, it found corruption involving people representing 54 separate countries.
Ticketing policyAccusations include an allegation a member of the Greek Olympics Committee said he had "persuaded" Lord Coe, chairman of the London organising committee, Locog, to give Greece more tickets on the pretext demand had outstripped supply.
Locog denies the claim.
A spokeswoman said: "With regard to 'boasts' by the Greek Olympic Committee' (HOC) that discussions on tickets took place with Sebastian Coe, we can confirm this is untrue.
"Seb received a letter from the HOC (as he did from other NOCs) and responded saying that tickets had been allocated in accordance with the IOC's ticketing policy. There was no further contact - either formal or informal - on this subject."
More than one million London 2012 tickets were distributed abroad among all the nations taking part in the Games, but the IOC has strict rules to try to combat touts.
National Olympic committees must ensure that their allocation is only sold within their own region.
Last month a senior Ukrainian Olympic official resigned after being filmed by the BBC offering tickets for cash.
'Strongest sanctions'The IOC said in a statement on the latest claims: "The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has moved quickly to deal with allegations that some National Olympic Committees (NOC) and Authorised Ticket Resellers (ATR) have broken rules relating to the sale of Olympic tickets.
"The IOC takes these allegations very seriously and has immediately taken the first steps to investigate.
"Should any irregularities be proven, the organisation will deal with those involved in an appropriate manner.
"The NOCs are autonomous organisations, but if any of the cases are confirmed the IOC will not hesitate to impose the strongest sanctions.
"The IOC has also determined that it will take on board any recommendations coming out of the inquiry to improve the way that tickets are allocated and sold internationally in the future."
London 2012 organising committee Locog said: "Rules and regulations for selling London 2012 tickets to international fans are clear and unambiguous.
"National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and their Authorised Ticket Sellers (ATRs) sign a contract with Locog agreeing to specific terms and conditions.
"The International Olympic Committee's (IOC) has launched an investigation in to the allegations and we will support them in any way we can. None of the tickets in question came from the allocation to the British public.
No tickets intended for the British market were involved, it added.
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