London 2012: Team GB wins first Olympic medals - BBC News
Team GB has won its first London 2012 medals, with cyclist Lizzie Armitstead taking silver in the women's road race.
Swimmer Rebecca Adlington has taken bronze in the final of the 400m freestyle.
London 2012 chairman Lord Coe insisted Olympics venues were "stuffed" with sports fans, after a row about empty seats on Saturday.
However, on Sunday empty seats could be seen at several sports, including basketball, volleyball and tennis.
Armitstead, 23, from Otley near Leeds, was beaten to the gold at the end of the 140-kilometre race by Holland's Marianne Vos in a sprint finish on The Mall.
She said: "I'm really, really happy. Maybe later I'll start thinking about that gold, but I'm happy with silver at the moment."
Adlington, 23, who lost her title to Camille Muffat of France, said she was glad she had won a medal at a home games.
"The crowd were just absolutely amazing, this is what I wanted, this is what picks you up, this is what gets you from fourth to third and gets us on that podium. I know so many people wanted me to get the gold and sorry about that, but I tried my absolute hardest, I'm so pleased with that."
Her battle to hold on to her 800m freestyle title will begin with heats on Thursday morning before Friday night's final.
In other Olympic developments:
- Paula Radcliffe has withdrawn from the marathon due to injury
- Team GB's men's football team scored a 3-1 victory against the United Arab Emirates including a goal from skipper Ryan Giggs
- Commuters have been advised to avoid London Bridge station on Monday as thousands head to south-east London for the equestrian cross country at Greenwich Park
- Police say 16 people have been arrested over ticket touting at the Olympics during the past two days
- Three people have been charged after 182 were held following a Critical Mass cycle ride near the Olympic Park on Friday
Lord Coe spoke out as the row mounted over unfilled seats in several Olympic venues.
At some venues, seats in the accredited "Olympic family" areas - reserved for groups including officials, sports federations, athletes, journalists and sponsors - have remained empty.
"I don't think you will be seeing this as an issue, long-term through the Games," he told a press conference.
Organisers Locog said it would fill some of the empty seats with servicemen and women, as well as local students and teachers.
It said it would also sell more tickets, after some 1,000 tickets were released on the London 2012 website on Saturday night.
A system has been introduced similar to the one used at Wimbledon, where people coming out of the stadium handed on their tickets so the seats could be made available to others.
A Locog spokesman added that it would examine options to upgrade the tickets of members of the public and move them into accredited areas.
On Sunday, empty seats were seen at venues including basketball at the Olympic Park, where troops filled the gaps, tennis at Wimbledon and volleyball at Earl's Court.
Around 100 seats at the gymnastics at the North Greenwich Arena were also given to troops.
But many other venues were full, including boxing, judo and fencing at ExCel, badminton at Wembley Arena and shooting at the Royal Artillery Barracks.
American Paul Fondie, who now lives in Kew, west London, said he was frustrated by the number of empty seats at the men's gymnastics at the O2 on Saturday.
He said he and his wife had not been able to take their six-year-old son because they could not get an extra ticket.
"It tainted my experience of the Olympics - it was our moment to come under the microscope and show that London can do it well."
Andy Murray has claimed his first Olympic singles victory, beating Switzerland's Stanislas Wawrinka 6-3 6-3.
And Briton Ben Ainslie opened his quest for a fourth Olympic gold medal with a second place finish in the opening race in the sailing at Weymouth Bay.
British teams have been competing in basketball, handball, hockey, volleyball, water polo and the football on Sunday.
Send your pictures and videos to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to 61124 (UK) or +44 7624 800 100 (International). If you have a large file you can upload here.
London 2012: Cadel Evans out and Fabian Cancellara a doubt for time trial - The Guardian
The 2011 Tour de France champion, Cadel Evans of Australia, has withdrawn from the Olympic time trial while Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara will have a health check before deciding whether to start Wednesday's event at Hampton Court.
The Australian Olympic Committee said Evans, who finished 79th in the road race, is too tired to compete in Wednesday's race against the clock. Evans struggled with his physical condition earlier this month, failing to defend his Tour de France title.
Cancellara's crash at Richmond's Star and Garter corner in Saturday's road race was a turning point in the race won by Alexander Vinokourov of Kazakhstan, and it has left the Swiss with heavy bruising to the right collarbone that he fractured in April.
The Swiss should start as one of the favourites on Wednesday, together with Great Britain's Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, and the defending world champion Tony Martin, but he left the finish of Saturday's race with his arm in a sling having completed the course after piling into the barriers on the sharp right-hander. "Happy [nothing] is broken but the pain will be on! For the time trial nothing is sure yet," he said on Twitter. "Have no words left. The tears are stronger than the pain."
The Swiss broke his collarbone in the Tour of Flanders in early April but had returned to his best for the Tour de France, in which he won the opening prologue time trial and led the race for a week before Wiggins took over. He was unable to match the Londoner in the first long time trial of the race, however, although he showed searing form at the finish of the first road race stage in Seraing, finishing second to Peter Sagan.
On Saturday he had looked to be one of the strongest in the latter stages of the road race, which boded well for the time trial, until his crash. Evans, meanwhile, suffered from an unspecified illness in the final week of the Tour de France and rode the men's road race on Saturday in order to assist the Australian team, finishing 79th.
Wiggins is unbeaten in long time trials – as opposed to briefer prologues – this season, having taken single stages in the Tour of the Algarve, Paris-Nice, the Tour of Romandie, Dauphiné Libéré and two at the Tour de France. He is confident in his chances of adding a fourth gold medal to his tally of two individual pursuit golds and a team pursuit gold, in addition to the bronzes he won in Sydney in the team pursuit and Athens in the madison. That would give him a higher medal tally than any other British Olympian, moving ahead of Sir Steve Redgrave's six.
The Great Britain men's road race team dispersed on Saturday evening, with only Froome and Wiggins remaining in their Surrey hotel. Mark Cavendish has a packed racing schedule over the next few days, with criteriums – appearance races of about 100km in Belgium on Sunday, France on Monday and Holland on Tuesday. He will then line up at the start of the Eneco Tour in the Low Countries next week, with rumours persisting that he may start the Tour of Britain in early September. His priority this year has been to honour the world champion's jersey by wearing it in as many races as possible and that is set to continue for five more weeks.
David Millar packed his personal effects – luggage from the Tour de France, Olympic kit and all – in to a taxi after Saturday's race finished on The Mall and headed straight for his mother's house in west London. He will enjoy a brief holiday with his wife Nicole and their daughter in Somerset before joining Cavendish at the Eneco Tour. He will also race the GP Ouest France in Plouay, Brittany, and is expected to lead the Garmin team in the inaugural world championship time trial on 15 September.
London 2012: China's Ye Shiwen staggered the world – even Ryan Lochte - The Guardian
The morning after the night before there was only one name on everybody's lips. It was not Ryan Lochte or Michael Phelps. In fact it was exactly the same person those two had been talking about themselves: Ye Shiwen. The 16-year-old, born and raised in Hangzhou out on the east coast of China, became the first swimmer to break a world record at these Olympics when she knocked more than a second off the time that won Steph Rice gold back in Beijing in 2008. And Rice had the advantage of swimming in a polyurethane suit, of the kind long since banned by the sport's governing body, Fina. It was not just Ye's speed, or her age, that was so staggering – it was the manner of her victory.
After 300m of fly, back and breaststroke, Ye was eight-tenths of a second behind USA's world champion, Elizabeth Beisel. And then, with 100m to go, something extraordinary happened. She swam her first 50m of freestyle in 29.25sec, and her second in 28.93. Those are just numbers, and mean little to those who do not study the sport. To put them in context, consider this: Ye was faster in the final 50m of her own 400m IM than Lochte was in his.
"Yeah, we were talking about that at dinner," Lochte said. "It is pretty impressive. She's fast. If she was there with me, she might have beat me." There's no might about it. Ye was 0.17 quicker over the final 50m of freestyle than the man many reckon to be the greatest all-round swimmer in the world. Beisel, Lochte's training partner, had no chance. She was two seconds slower over the final 50m.
It is the first time in history such a thing has happened. But it will not be the last. Ominously, Ye is certain she can get better still, and seeing as she is only 16, who can doubt her? "There's much room for improvement," she said. "It's true for breaststroke I am lagging behind but I think my freestyle result is also not that good. Usually I'm very bad at turning. This is one of my worst basic skills, but turning is a very important skill, therefore I was practising my turns before the competition." She says she is even better at the 200m IM, the event in which she won gold at the world championships in Shanghai last year, when she was 15.
Ye's team-mate Li Xuanxu took bronze and she is only 17 herself. She too came home in under 30 seconds, with a time of 29.77. The next best split was almost a second slower.
Then there was Sun Yang, 20, and also from Hangzhou. The world knew a little more about him, after he beat the longest-standing record in swimming at the world championships last year, taking 0.42 off the 1500m time set by the great Grant Hackett back in 2001.
Sun won the 800m in Shanghai, too. In London he has already won gold and set a new Olympic record in the 400m freestyle, beating South Korea's world and Olympic champion Park Tae-hwan. And on Sunday morning he was the fastest-qualifier in the heats of the 200m freestyle, pipping Lochte. It is entirely possible that Sun will sweep all the freestyle distances from 200m to 1500m.
China's success has prompted, with tedious predictability, dark mutterings about exactly how they are achieving it. Over the course of the 1990s they had 40 swimmers banned after positive doping tests. The sceptics – or perhaps cynics – would say that the doubts about Ye, Li and Sun are the inevitable consequence of that history.
There is, of course, no evidence to support such thoughts other than the talent and speed of the athletes themselves. Surely the success of this young generation stems from a legacy of a very different kind – that of the Beijing Olympics. China has sent 49 swimmers to these Games, and 27 of them were born after 1990. On the women's side, there are eight who were born in 1995 or after. The country's success in the Aquatics Centre surely owes a lot to the investment in the sport made before the 2008 Games.
Their medals could also owe something to the unique talent identification system China uses to stream children into different sports. In his excellent 2003 profile of Yao Ming for the New Yorker, Pete Hessler, talks about how Chinese basketball players are selected strictly on the basis of their height and genealogy. "We go to the schools and look at the children's height, and then we check their parents' height," Hessler was told by one high school coach. "The method of early recruitment is a product of China's inability to provide every public school with coaches and sports facilities," Hessler wrote. "The system has proved effective in low-participation, routine-based sports like gymnastics and diving." And also, it seems, swimming.
Ye says she started swimming in 2003 because her "teacher spotted she had big hands". In swimming, where physique determines so much, the rather-rudimentary method of recruiting young athletes on the basis of their physical characteristics rather than their talent or inclination for the sport, appears to work well. It is coupled, of course, to an infamously fierce training programme, to the point where Ye was asked whether she resented being treated like a robot. "Of course not," she replied. "I think we have very good training, very scientific-based training, that's why we all have progressed."
London Olympics 2012: Great Britain's Paula Radcliffe denied her lap of honour in front of her home fans - Daily Telegraph
It is the kind of lifestyle that has been embraced by the young man she mentors, world 5,000 metres champion Mo Farah. Indeed Farah admits it was Radcliffe’s example that persuaded him to take up a monastic existence several years ago, training and sleeping and doing little else at high altitude in Africa.
But her influence goes beyond elite athletes. In her prime, when she won three London Marathons between 2002-05 and set an astonishing world record of 2hr 15min 25sec in 2003 that was quicker than any British male runner managed that year and has not remotely challenged since, she sparked a jogging boom in Britain, particularly among young women.
The sight of Radcliffe hurtling through the streets of London, her blonde pony-tail bobbing up and down in her familiar, slightly ungainly style, turned her into something of a natural treasure, though by then she was already a seasoned performer with a string of international titles to her name.
In 2001 she was crowned senior world cross-country champion in Ostend, and the following year she defended her title in Dublin before winning 5,000 metres gold at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester and European 10,000m gold in Munich.
But it was over 26.2 miles that Radcliffe really found her feet, and after making her marathon debut with a victory in the 2002 London Marathon, she made the event her own by breaking the world record for the first time in Chicago the same year.
In all, she won seven times in big-city ‘Marathon Majors’ races, with three victories in New York completing a period of extraordinary domination. She also won gold at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki.
But the Olympic Games have been a different story - a succession of near misses and spectacular breakdowns that have burnt deep into the Radcliffe psyche over the years.
After narrowly missing out at the trials for the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Radcliffe made her Olympic debut in Atlanta in 1996 where she finished fifth in the 5,000m final.
If that was disappointing, it was nothing compared to the despair she felt in Sydney four years later when she led from the front in the 10,000m final, only to be overhauled by three athletes on the final lap to finish just outside the medals in fourth place.
Having switched to the marathon by 2004, the Athens Games offered her best opportunity of Olympic fulfilment since she went into the race by far the quickest woman in the field and the overwhelming favourite for gold.
Her subsequent meltdown, when she collapsed with a stomach problem 4½ miles from the finish, brought her to a new low. So low, in fact, that after she had recovered from the immediate trauma, she acquired a new serenity. Having touched the abyss, she reasoned, things could surely not get any worse.
Motherhood also brought a sense of perspective, and so when she suffered a stress fracture in her right femur just months before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the heartbreak was not quite as intense as it was in Athens.
Although she did recover in time to go to the start-line, she was badly short of fitness and hobbled home in 23rd place. Afterwards she cried, but moved on. There was still London, the city in which she had never been beaten, in which to fulfil her Olympic dream.
At 38 and with a body that has clearly had enough of the high-mileage pounding that it has been subjected to for 20 years, that Olympic dream is now over. The one void in her trophy cabinet will never be filled.
In truth, Radcliffe was never realistically going to challenge for a medal based on her recent form, though the race is poorer for her absence.
After a lifetime of dedication to her sport, the world’s greatest ever female marathon runner deserved her lap of honour in front of her home fans.
London 2012's Eric the Eel uncovered: Niger rower finishes last (but he was only 90 seconds behind the winner) - Daily Mail
- 35-year-old only took up rowing three months ago
- Sir Steve Redgrave criticises decision to give him wild card entry
By Ian Garland
|
A 35-year-old African rower has stolen the hearts of the London 2012 crowd, after battling to a last place finish in the single sculls - just three months after he took up the sport.
The crowd at Eton Dorney roared Niger's Hamadou Djibo Issaka across the finish line, 100 seconds behind the repecharge winner.
His achievement has made him London Games' answer to Eric the Eel, the swimmer from Equatorial Guinea who made headlines when he finished last in the 100 metres freestyle at the Sydney Games in 2000.
Hamadou Djibo Issaka of Niger has become an early hero of the London 2012 Olympics - this Games' answer to Eric the Eel
Issaka charges across the finish line at Eton Dorney, 100 seconds behind the heat winner - just three months after he took up rowing
Issaka is at the Games courtesy of a wild card from the IOC Tripartite Commission, which allows each National Olympic Committee up to five athletes to participate at a summer games.
Previously a swimmer, he was handpicked by the Niger Swimming Federation, who sent him to Egypt to try rowing.
After finding his feet, he then went for more training at the International Rowing Development Centre in Tunisia for two months.
His achievements in the past 12 weeks have earned him the status of the landlocked Saharan nation's national rowing champion.
The crowd roared as the grinning 35-year-old crossed the line and then slumped, exhausted in his boat
A giant screen tracked Issaka's performance as he tried in vain to catch the other rowers
His early success faded fast on Saturday as he was quickly outclassed by the other rowers in his heat.
But Issaka was thrilled with his performance.
MEET JENNET THE JELLYFISH
First there was Eric the eel — now meet Jennet the Jellyfish, competing in the same event as Britain's Rebecca Adlington.
Jennet Saryyeva of Turkmenistan finished a minute and 18 seconds behind the rest of the competitors in her 400m freestyle heat.
Her time of 5min 40.29sec is two seconds outside her personal best. Eric ‘the eel’ Moussambani shot to fame at the 2000 Games in sydney when he swam the 100m freestyle in 1min 52.72sec — more than twice the time of the faster competitors and even outside the 200m world record.
It was, however, a new personal best and a national record for Equatorial Guinea.
Grinning ear-to-ear as he climbed out of his boat, he told reporters: 'It went well. I passed the finish line, it was great.'
'There were so many people encouraging me.'
'I was happy to finish under their applause. Really, I'm happy for the whole country.'
Not everyone was happy to see Djibo Issaka at the Olympics, however.
Steve Redgrave, a five-time Olympic rowing gold medalist, is a critic of the decision to allow him to row.
He said: 'There are better scullers from different countries who are not allowed to compete because of the different countries you've got.'
But Matt Smith, general secretary of world governing body FISA, insists he was added to the program and didn't take the place of another rower.
And he's proud of the way the crowd took to the underdog, adding: 'We are so proud. It's given us a new country, and a big boost. As far as rowing is concerned it's fantastic. And we are really happy about the response from the spectators.'
Issaka, meanwhile has had the experience of a lifetime.
On Friday, instead of being tucked up in bed before his early-morning heat the next day, he was inside the Olympic Stadium attending the opening ceremony. He had been advised not to but he couldn't resist.
'It was magnificent,' he said. 'I had never seen fireworks before in my life!'
He certainly didn't produce any fireworks in Sunday's race. But it will probably go down as one of the moments of the London Games.
'I'm preparing for the next competition,' he said. 'I'm happy with how things have gone.'
London police warn tourists over fake officers - Reuters UK
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - Police on Sunday warned tourists in London to beware of people pretending to be plain-clothes officers and stealing credit cards and cash during the Olympics, and said they arrested more touts for illegally reselling Games tickets.
The capital's Metropolitan Police Service said it arrested three men aged between 27 and 35 years on Saturday on charges of impersonating a police officer and conspiracy to steal.
"There have been a number of incidents where criminals have impersonated police officers to take money off unsuspecting tourists," said Detective Superintendent Steve Osborn.
"Officers would never take money from you, they would never take you to a cashpoint and ask you for money. They are unlikely to ask to see your bank cards and would never need to ask you for your pin number," he added.
Saturday's arrests were made in central London's Russell Square, where London 2012 organisers are running a transport service for media covering the Games.
Police said there was no direct connection between the arrests and the Olympics, but noted such con-men could be attracted to London by the lure of extra tourists during the Games.
The London force also said it had arrested another three people for illegally reselling Olympic tickets, known as touting in Britain and scalping in the United States, after nabbing 16 on Friday and Saturday.
Two of those held on Sunday were arrested outside Horse Guards Parade in central London, site of the beach volleyball tournament.
Three more people have been charged with various offences in connection with a mass alternative cycle ride that officers stopped near the Olympic stadium in east London on Friday evening, the police said.
Officers arrested 182 cyclists taking part in the "Critical Mass" ride for ignoring an order to stay away from the Olympic Park while the opening ceremony was underway.
All but four of those arrested have been released on bail pending further inquiries.
(Reporting by Tim Castle; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
London 2012 Olympics: Lizzie Armitstead's tough choice to compete in road race vindicated - Daily Telegraph
“I have always loved riding both track and road,” says Armitstead, “and to be honest I would love to have tried doing both but the omnium has become such a specific event that the training does not really coincide with what I have done today. Maybe I can do both in Rio [de Janeiro].”
That is not a threat to be taken lightly. Armitstead is one of that select group of riders in the world who could genuinely contemplate winning medals in both and that list would be headed by yesterday’s winner, Marianne Vos herself, who is a former world and Olympics points champion as well as a world road champion and five time runner-up. Remarkably, Vos is also the reigning world cyclo-cross champion, a title she has won on four other occasions.
In many ways Armitstead is Vos Mark II. The Dutch woman is still only 25, despite having a cupboard full of medals, so clashes between the two great all-rounders of women’s cycling can only become more and more frequent.
What are your experiences of the London 2012 Olympic Games so far? You can get in touch using the form below: