London’s parks show Occupiers the exit - Financial Times
June 20, 2012 7:35 pm
London 2012 Olympics: Games organisers defend auction of torches to cover costs of Games - Daily Telegraph
The initiative smacks of an organisation desperate to extract as much revenue as it can by whatever means. Locog defended the move, saying it would be selling off all equipment used in the Games as well as computers from its offices.
Locog chairman Seb Coe disagreed that the auction was ‘demeaning’. “I think we’ve done the best torch relay that I have ever witnessed and the interest is extraordinary,” he said. “And yes, we’ve done some things that have upped the cost a bit in key areas, and this is not a bad way of helping us fund it.”
Coe was speaking at the Beyond Sport awards in London, where he received the ‘Leadership in Sport Award’ for Locog’s International Inspiration legacy programme.
Beckham’s manager said the player was aware of the torch being sold and he was ”happy to help off-set the costs to other relay runners”.
Locog said the torches cost £495 each to make, although some runners had theirs paid for by a sponsor.
Locog said yesterday other sporting items would follow on the auction website, including beach volleyballs from the event at Horseguard’s Parade and the relay batons from athletics.
Yesterday, Locog had two pages of framed autographed photographs of Locog chairman Lord Coe, rower Sir Steve Redgrave and athletes Daley Thompson and Dame Kelly Holmes up for auction on the site.
Locog has a tight budget of £2.2 billion raised through sponsorship and the sale of tickets, broadcast rights and merchandise.
This is separate to the £9.3 billion public sector budget.
Locog hopes to raise net merchandise revenue of £100 million, but the sale of the torches has added a new dimension to commercialising the Olympics.
Locog commercial director Chris Townsend said: ”The relay will last for 70 days and the flame will carry with it the values and spirit of the Olympic Games across the UK.”
Townsend said the “authentic London 2012 torches” would be released in special limited editions marking significant moments along the Torch Relay.
They will feature metallic shards signed by athletes and celebrities.
On the website, Locog is enthusiastic about the torch descriptions. ”This rare and historical Olympic artefact could be yours to own!” it says.
The torches will be delivered in a bespoke collector’s box.
London 2012: Man charged with Olympic ticket fraud - BBC News
A 44-year old man from Catford in London has been charged with two counts of fraud over the sale of Olympic tickets, Scotland Yard has said.
Christakis Ioannou will also face charges of money laundering and the illegal sale of Olympic tickets when he appears at West London Magistrates' Court on 4 July.
Meanwhile a 39-year old man has been arrested on suspicion of the unauthorised sale of Olympic tickets.
He is in custody in Leicester.
That arrest was made on Tuesday morning by officers from the Metropolitan Police's Operation Podium - its team investigating ticket fraud and touting connected to the London Olympic and Paralympic Games.
It was a result of ongoing enquiries into the unauthorised sale of Olympic and Paralympic tickets as part of a corporate hospitality package, Scotland Yard added.
A search warrant was executed at a business address in central Leicester.
The Operation Podium team also work to combat scams involving non-existent hotel rooms and companies being duped into buying luxury goods which never turn up.
As of 14 June, 186 people have been arrested by officers working for the operation.
In March, eight people were charged in connection with a £2.3m fraud against the Olympic Delivery Authority.
London 2012: Liam Phillips wants Olympic medal despite crash - BBC News
BMX rider Liam Phillips believes he can still win an Olympic medal at London 2012 despite breaking his collarbone at last month's World Championships.
Phillips, 23, was officially named to Team GB last week despite major surgery after the crash three weeks ago.
"There are seven weeks until the first day of the competition, I should have quite a lot of time," said Phillips.
"I should be in fine form. I put myself in the bracket of five or six riders looking to go there and medal."
Phillips on his broken collarbone
"It's quite strange - it's not like any injury I've had in the past. I've had it plated and the collarbone feels normal. You go to pick up your bag of shopping and then remember your collarbone is still broken, so you have to be careful doing general day-to-day things. But it's allowed me to continue my training as planned, sleep well and doing everything that's expected this close to an Olympic Games."
Somerset's Phillips sustained the second collarbone break of his career on day two of the World Championships in Birmingham, having won time trial silver the previous night.
"For the first 15 minutes or so after I crashed, I was keeping my fingers crossed that it was just a broken collarbone - which does sound rather strange now," he told BBC Sport.
"But I understand that a collarbone can be healed. I had surgery and it was plated, which means I can get back to training almost immediately.
"I've been focusing on the London Olympics for a very long time. An injury 10 weeks out isn't ideal, but I've done so much work over the last few years that I'm not going to let an injury ruin it."
Phillips is currently ranked 48th in the world having spent most of 2011 inside the Manchester velodrome rather than on the BMX circuit.
He made the switch to track cycling in part because it eliminated many of the injury risks, but returned to BMX later that year.
"I do feel cursed [with injuries] but I race BMX bikes. I'm not going to look for any pity from anybody else," he said.
"Training with the track team was fantastic, spending seven months with some of the best riders in the world, but I missed the BMX.
"I overlooked the buzz I get from riding my bike each day and I soon learnt I was going to miss it more than I could ever have imagined."
Having made his comeback, Phillips looked to be in excellent shape at the World Championships inside Birmingham's National Indoor Arena at the end of May, but the crash wiped out his chances of a second medal - and of sampling the home atmosphere.
"That was the frustrating thing, it was a massive race in the UK and that's not something we get to experience very often," he said.
"It was surreal, it was fantastic to be there and have the crowd on your side. I'm looking forward to experiencing that again in London, seeing as I didn't get to experience too much at the World Championships."
London's take on Stonehenge for Summer Solstice - ITN
The iconic megaliths of Stonehenge have been recreated in central London ahead of the Summer Solstice on Wednesday evening.
Citihenge is a giant sculpture made from scrap cars and, unlike its neolithic name-sake, it is surrounded by urban landmarks rather than rural tranquility.
Each of the six, three-car henges is five metres wide and more than five metres high, and the whole thing weighs 36 tonnes.
It was designed by sculptor Tommy Gun over a three-month period.
He said: "It is made entirely from old car parts, which taps into my own childhood growing up on a farm where I used to love building and creating things with pieces of discarded machinery."
Citihenge will remain in London for two days before touring the UK, appearing at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex from June 28 to July 1.
London bombing survivor Martine Wiltshire selected for Paralympics - ITV
A survivor of the July 7 suicide bombings spoke of her joy today at being picked to compete at the London 2012 Paralympics.
Martine Wiltshire, who took up sitting volleyball after losing her legs in the 2005 terror attacks, described her ParalympicsGB selection as "amazing".
"It's a dream, and something that I never, ever thought I'd be doing, and a journey that I never thought I'd be on."
Video report by Lewis Vaughan Jones
"This has been a long journey but it does not stop here, as we now enter our final training phase.
Wiltshire was one of the last people to be pulled from the wreckage of the tube train at Aldgate. She spent 10 days in a coma, and lost both her legs.
She is among the 21 players who make up Britain's first ever men's and women's sitting volleyball teams to compete at a Paralympics.
In July 2005, Wiltshire had been celebrating London winning the right to host the 2012 Games the night before and was running late for work as a marketing manager when she got caught up in the bombings.
"The last thing I was reading on the tube that morning before the bomb went off was about the Olympics," she told ITV News reporter Lewis Vaughan Jones.
Wiltshire feels she is lucky to be alive because she was only 3ft away from one of the bombers and 52 people were killed that day.
Wiltshire tried a taster Paralympic day and fell in love with the team sport of sitting volleyball.
The sport is in its infancy in Britain, potentially putting them at a disadvantage in comparison to their rivals, but with London 2012 on the horizon the team has made a determined push to try and prove they are worth their home nation spot.
ParalympicsGB had only sent a standing volleyball team to compete at the Games before London 2012.
It has meant that an extra focus by the British Paralympic Association and Volleyball England governing bodies so the teams could meet their "credible performance" requirement before being rubber-stamped for a home nation slot.
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