London 2012 Olympics: whinging Australian men's hockey coach Ric Charlesworth complains about schedule - Daily Telegraph London 2012 Olympics: whinging Australian men's hockey coach Ric Charlesworth complains about schedule - Daily Telegraph
free web site traffic and promotion

London 2012 Olympics: whinging Australian men's hockey coach Ric Charlesworth complains about schedule - Daily Telegraph

London 2012 Olympics: whinging Australian men's hockey coach Ric Charlesworth complains about schedule - Daily Telegraph

Charlesworth, who led the Australian women's team to gold at the Atlanta and Sydney Olympics before taking over as coach of the Kookaburras in 2009, also pointed to the fact that the top seeds in the women's tournament, the Dutch, had no 8.30am starts.

"It's not that they are number one, again it's just that it's not equally shared when some teams have to play three early matches and others none," he said.

Meanwhile, Hockey Australia chief Mark Anderson reflected Charlesworth's dissatisfaction with the schedule.

"When you look at the schedule it is patently unfair in our opinion," he said. "None of the teams want to play in this early morning time slot.

"We have been scheduled to play at this time on three occasions. The world ranked number two, three and four teams do not have any matches scheduled for this time. The fifth and sixth ranked teams feature once.

"Out of the 12 teams in the competition, only six teams play at this time and Australia features three times. We are not looking for an unfair advantage, we just want to compete on a level playing field."

The criticisms are the latest in a growing list and come after the team played the test event at the Riverbank Arena on the Olympic Park and Charlesworth criticised the surface of the new pitch.

“The pitch is an issue: you make more mistakes than you would like and it brings down the standard of the game," he raged at the time, in early May, despite the fact that most of his key players had praised the surface.

"The ball bobbles a fair bit," he continued, "and it doesn’t reward skill. We have been playing on the one [blue pitch] in Perth for three months and it started off good and then it went bad and now it’s getting better.”



London 2012: Heathrow Airport in numbers - BBC News

Heathrow in numbers - how the UK's biggest airport is getting ready for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Some 500,000 people will be flying into London for the Olympics and Paralympics this summer.

That includes 100,000 athletes, 20,000 members of the media and 150 heads of state. Most of them will arrive via Heathrow.

It will be the start and finish line for the bulk of visitors, giving the country's biggest airport its busiest day ever.

That day will be Monday 13 August, the day after the closing ceremony and the day 65% of visitors are planning to leave.

Some 203,000 bags will be squeezed on to the baggage system - that's 35% more than on a normal day and about 13,000 more than it is designed to handle.

Of those bags, 15,000 will be oversized - full of canoes, javelins, bikes and poles for the pole vault. There will also be more than 980 firearms to check, plus ammunition.

'Heavily-congested skies'

A special temporary terminal is being built just for the "Games family" - athletes and coaches to you and me.

It will be open for three days, snuggled between terminals four and five, and will boast 31 check-in desks and seven security lanes.

Meanwhile, hundreds of extra border staff - they will not give an exact figure - will be on hand to try to keep passport queues down.

Sixteen mobile teams of 10 guards each will be available to target trouble spots if, or should that be when, the queues build up.

It is not just Heathrow of course.

Air traffic control is facing its biggest ever challenge, coping with heavily-congested skies, the threat of a terror attack and possible bad weather. Twenty-five controllers are practising in the simulator every day.

In all, 400 have been specially trained over the past four years to deal with the extra workload.

Any rogue planes should be spotted within two to three minutes, after which military controllers take over that zone and a decision is made whether or not to scramble fast jets.

Extra plane?

The Paralympics is a third of the size of the main event but it is still a huge challenge.

Start Quote

The Chinese team are arriving on 27 different planes and they'll probably need an extra plane at the end to carry all their medals”

End Quote

Heathrow will have to deal with a month's worth of wheelchair users in just a week - about 1,800 in total.

Thirteen new scissor lifts and 100 new ramps have been deployed to load and unload wheelchairs while there are six new powered stair climbers to move large electric wheelchairs.

Two-hundred extra staff will welcome the Paralympians and help with the biggest challenge of all - making sure every athlete is reunited quickly with their chair.

As one Paralympian put it, you wouldn't expect able-bodied athletes to leave the plane in someone else's trainers would you?

The Chinese team are arriving on 27 different planes and they'll probably need an extra plane at the end to carry all their medals. I made that last bit up.

Finally, 1,000 local volunteers will greet athletes off the plane, help with their luggage and welcome them to London.

Then a few weeks later, as the Olympic flame dies, those volunteers will wave them off again as they head for home.

One thousand people will be standing there waving goodbye at planes, so if you happen to be going on holiday that day, you might want to wave back.

The Olympic and Paralympic Games will be the biggest sporting event in the UK this year. Will you be travelling to the UK to see the Games? Please send us your comments and experiences.



London 2012: Remaining Olympic tickets released for general sale - BBC News

Around 500,000 tickets for events at the London 2012 Olympic Games have been released for general sale, organisers Locog have said.

There are some £20 tickets left for sports such as volleyball, table tennis, weightlifting, taekwondo, boxing and fencing.

But several sports have sold out, and there are only higher-priced tickets left for most medal events.

The tickets went on sale at 11:00 BST, with a 24-hour window for purchases.

Their availability can already be viewed on the 2012 ticketing website.

Organisers Locog say there is a good number of tickets at the cost of £45 to £450 in sports including archery, badminton, basketball, beach volleyball, canoe sprint, diving, handball and hockey.

Only a limited number of tickets are available in race walk, mountain biking, artistic gymnastics and rowing.

Up to four tickets can be purchased per session, and up to four sessions in one transaction, for all available sports apart from football - where more tickets are available to encourage groups to attend.

'Delivered on promise'

All tickets have been sold in some sports, including athletics, cycling, equestrianism, rhythmic gymnastics and swimming as well as the opening and closing ceremonies.

Locog commercial director Chris Townsend said: "Our priority has been to get as many people who missed out in the sales process last year to the Games.

"We have delivered on our promise and now another 150,000 people have successfully purchased up to four tickets each."

He warned: "Wednesday's sale is a live sale, and, like other high demand events including pop concerts, we expect the website to be very busy and customers may well be held in queues for over 30 minutes at peak times".

The online ticketing system sparked criticism last year after it crashed under high demand.

In some cases, the system reportedly informed potential buyers they had secured tickets, who were later told that they had failed.

Meanwhile, plans have been unveiled for a 10,000-spectator area with a giant screen showing live events in the Olympic Park during the Games.

"Park Live" will be open from early morning until late evening for fans without tickets for the sport venues.

Will you be trying to buy tickets for the Olympic Games? Will this be your first attempt? Please tell us about your experience using the form below.



London stocks slide on Europe worries - Marketwatch

By Barbara Kollmeyer, MarketWatch

MADRID (MarketWatch) — London stocks traded sharply lower on Wednesday, led by heavily represented banks and resource stocks, with sentiment dented by euro-area worries and losses for Burberry Group PLC after the retailer reported results.

The FTSE 100 index /quotes/zigman/3173262 UK:UKX -1.94%  lost 1.6% to 5,317.76, after two straight days of gains, with the market up 1.9% the prior session.

The focus for markets was securely on the European Union informal summit to come later Wednesday, and hopes that leaders will make headway with plans to combat the crisis. Comments from former Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos rattled the market after he said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires late Tuesday that discussions were taking place regarding a euro exit.

Poland: A proxy for Eastern Europe

Poland's economy is likely to be one of the best performing in the European Union in the years ahead. What are the factors behind that growth and how will the country's currency respond? Europe Bureau Chief Bill Watts discusses the issue with Thu Lan Nguyen, a currency strategist at Commerzbank.

He backed away from those comments in an interview with CNBC, but the negative sentiment stuck ahead of the evening summit, weighing on just about everything but the U.S. dollar.

A risk-averse mood put virtually every sector in the red, but bank and oil sectors were hit hardest across Europe.

Heavyweight banks HSBC Holdings PLC /quotes/zigman/13843 UK:HSBA -2.03%   /quotes/zigman/207333/quotes/nls/hbc HBC +0.12%  and Barclays PLC /quotes/zigman/301787 UK:BARC -3.86%   /quotes/zigman/220666/quotes/nls/bc BC +2.99%   /quotes/zigman/152323/quotes/nls/bcs BCS +1.73%  fell 2% and more than 4%, respectively. Standard Chartered PLC /quotes/zigman/22532 UK:STAN -2.64%  shed nearly 3%.

Commodity prices also fell sharply, with crude-oil futures for July delivery /quotes/zigman/2203147 CLN2 -1.09%  losing 87 cents to $90.97 a barrel and gold futures for June delivery /quotes/zigman/661661 GCM2 -1.34%  down $20.80 to $1,555.80 an ounce.

In the wake of this decline, shares of oil major BP PLC /quotes/zigman/247026/quotes/nls/bp BP +0.37%   /quotes/zigman/210014 UK:BP -1.82%  fell 1.3% and Royal Dutch Shell PLC /quotes/zigman/379078/quotes/nls/rds.a RDS.A -0.11%   /quotes/zigman/379078/quotes/nls/rds.a RDS.A -0.11%   /quotes/zigman/359915 UK:RDSA -1.86%  dropped 1.7%. BG Group PLC /quotes/zigman/249967 UK:BG -2.63%  fell 2%.

Among miners, shares of Rio Tinto PLC /quotes/zigman/155899 UK:RIO -4.52%   /quotes/zigman/182541/quotes/nls/rio RIO +0.48%  fell 4.5% and BHP Billiton PLC /quotes/zigman/184879 UK:BLT -3.78%   /quotes/zigman/270355/quotes/nls/bhp BHP -1.38%  slid 3.7%. Xstrata PLC /quotes/zigman/300486 UK:XTA -5.42%  dropped over 5%.

Shares of luxury goods group Burberry Group PLC /quotes/zigman/307688 UK:BRBY -2.45%  fell over 3% after the company reported full-year results. Burberry’s closely watched adjusted pretax profit came in at GBP297.9 million ($469 million), which was within expectations. Sales rose 24%, helped by its Asia markets. The company said it would be investing in newer and bigger stores to help boost growth.

Among the few gainers, shares of medical-device maker Smith & Nephew PLC /quotes/zigman/263642 UK:SN +1.50%  rose 1.2%.

Shares of British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC /quotes/zigman/143786 UK:BSY +0.22%  rose 0.7% after the U.K. Competition Commission cleared it in a probe, saying the company is not dominating in the British pay-TV movie market.

/quotes/zigman/3173262
/quotes/zigman/13843
/quotes/zigman/207333/quotes/nls/hbc
/quotes/zigman/301787
/quotes/zigman/220666/quotes/nls/bc
/quotes/zigman/152323/quotes/nls/bcs
/quotes/zigman/22532
/quotes/zigman/2203147
/quotes/zigman/661661
/quotes/zigman/247026/quotes/nls/bp
/quotes/zigman/210014
/quotes/zigman/379078/quotes/nls/rds.a
/quotes/zigman/379078/quotes/nls/rds.a
/quotes/zigman/359915
/quotes/zigman/249967
/quotes/zigman/155899
/quotes/zigman/182541/quotes/nls/rio
/quotes/zigman/184879
/quotes/zigman/270355/quotes/nls/bhp
/quotes/zigman/300486
/quotes/zigman/307688
/quotes/zigman/263642
/quotes/zigman/143786

0 Responses to "London 2012 Olympics: whinging Australian men's hockey coach Ric Charlesworth complains about schedule - Daily Telegraph"