Tag Archives: Olympic

On the Run

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7 Aug 2012 17:01

Missing: Seven athletes from Cameroon ‘absconded’ from Olympic village amid asylum fears

Seven athletes from Cameroon have gone missing in Britain after competing in the Olympics, sparking fears they have fled the Games to claim asylum.

The five boxers, swimmer and a footballer have all disappeared from the athletes’ village at the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London.

Some of the missing Athletes

David Ojong, the head of mission for Team Cameroon, confirmed that the group were reported missing earlier this week.

All seven athletes would have had visas allowing them to remain in the UK until November and it is understood that none of the seven have claimed asylum.

David Ojong told Cameroonian media that of 60 athletes and officials living in the village, 28 have gone home, 24 were still in the village and seven have disappeared.

Two of these three athletes are vital to the Cameroon’s medal hopes

The missing athletes include all five of the team’s boxers – Thomas Essomba, who competed in the 49kg category, Christian Donfack Adjoufack in the 80kg, Abdon Mewoli in the 60kg, Blaise Yepmou Mendouo in the plus 91kg and Terv Sheldonomo in the 364kg – who disappeared over the weekend.

The others were Drusille Ngako, 25, a stand-by goalkeeper for Cameroon’s women’s team, and swimmer Paul Ekane Edingue, 21.

Cameroonian athletes are known to have gone missing at previous international sporting events, including the Commonwealth Games. Once they have left the athletes’ village, the absconders are very difficult to find and apprehend.

Occasionally, the bright lights and many attractions of the bars in the Olympic village and beyond are hard to resist, and there have been numerous sightings of one of the missing men throughout the week.

If you see this man, alert the authorities immediately –
and under no circumstances lend him any money.

Tyson is Homosexual (No, not that one)

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The following piece needs no introduction, save that it came from The Washington Post, so you can take it to be true. Not that you need to be told from which country it came. It could only happen in one country.

Christian Site’s Ban on ‘G’ Word Sends Homosexual to Olympics

The American Family Association obviously didn’t foresee the problems that might arise with its strict policy to always replace the word “gay” with “homosexual” on the Web site of its Christian news outlet,OneNewsNow. The group’s automated system for changing the forbidden word wound up publishing a story about a world-class sprinter named “Tyson Homosexual” who qualified this week for the Beijing Olympics.

The problem: Tyson’s real last name is Gay. Therefore, OneNewsNow’s reliable software changed the Associated Press story about Tyson Gay‘s amazing Olympic qualifying trial to read this way:

Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.

His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn’t count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here’s what does matter: Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he’s certainly someone to watch in Beijing.

“It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Homosexual said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”

 Read the whole piece here

I cannot add anything to that.

“Oh say can you see,
By the dawn’s early light…”

Gong with the Wind

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My mate Gav moans about (see comments) the BBC commentators “bigging-up”
(a phrase, I believe, in common parlance nowadays) British competitors at the Olympics to heights they couldn’t hope to attain. Tom Daley, Wiggly Baggins and Twiggy Broke-Legge in the 4 Day Horse Jockeying have all become victims of the curse of the commentator.

I suppose it depends on which sport you’re involved in. Swimmers get to be narrated by the quite excellent Andy Jameson and Adrian Moorhouse, two men who really know their stuff (although why they have Colin Montgomery in the box next to them is beyond me. What does he know about breast stroke, apart from the obvious?).

Monty bluffs his was through the swimming

If you’re unfortunate enough to be a cyclist you get Hugo Porter, fresh from retiring from international sport in 1928, and who has either left his spectacles back in Wolverhampton or reads a cycling race rather less well than I read Korean.

None, though, get more excited and excitable than Country File‘s very own Matt Baker who was in serious danger of suffering an orgasm during the men’s gymnastics on Monday night. For Matt, team GB can do no wrong and if Beth Twaddle’s knees fell off, Baker would claim it as an attempted Triple Dorito, punch the air and poor old Christine Still sitting beside him. (I don’t mean she’s still sitting beside him, just that Matt’s co-commentator’s name is Christine Still – she with the voice of a thousand Stukas.)

(Baker was probably not alone in orgasming over the boy gymnasts. Earlier in the BBC studio, Gabby Logan, Carl Lewis and Ian Thorpe all had a touch of the vapours when the subject came up).

My personal gripe (today) with the BBC is the so-called Olympic Body Match feature on their website. Here you can tap in your vital stats and they will calculate who you most resemble in the Olympic family. Apparently, my perfect match is Lijiao Gong:- a chinese woman shot putter.  I never expected Olga Korbut (no-one ever does) but surely there must be scope for a stewards on that one ? Bring me the Japanese coach !

SPOT OF THE DAY:

Nice to see our Royal family supporting Zara Phillips during the 10 yard Grouse Shoot. They even sobered up the Duchess of Ming for the event. Charlie, presumably, was having a day orf her.

On Your Marks, Get Rich, Go

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It’s nice to hear that the Olympic Torch will be in Croydon today. All morning I’ve been singing to myself  “It’s coming home, it’s coming home, fire’s coming home…”.
I suppose if (as has often happened on this relay) the flame goes out they can always re-ignite it with the embers of a burning sofa left over from the riots.

Yes, there’s no getting away from it : IT’S here. That event that you and everyone at T’BBC Salford has been looking forward to.  London 2012 is here and it doesn’t matter that, like me, the very thought of Sebastian Coe induces in you a touch of the Yangtze Rapids it’s here to dominate your tv set, pub conversation and in some cases, the very hell you live in.

Nobody enjoys sport more than I do (unless I have to actually compete in it, you understand) but I do get the taste of a thousand lemons in my mouth as the BBC commentaries and fanfares are drowned out by the clinking-clanking sound of Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Samsung, Procter&Gamble (as if it’s much of a gamble)  G4S and the rest of them hauling sack-loads of our cash out of the country. And all this before Brendan Foster even gets the chance to sober up, or Michael Vaughan interviews Steve Redgrave about his two Olympic Gold Medals.

The decision to move the BBC out of London in the Jubilee Year (in the end, the Queen refused to move to Bury) and the LONDON olympics is really bearing fruit now. The team in Salford are left to report on events in London the way that Jeremy Bowen used to report on events Syria from a vantage point over the Jordan border. They do, of course, have people nearer the action, but for Orla Guerin read Carol Kirkwood, and for John Simpson read the brilliant Mike Bushell. From their gantry this morning above Freedom Square…sorry…Olympic Park, Carol kindly familiarised the viewer with the London skyline, as if it was us who’d been away, not them:

“…and to the left of the screen you can see the Shard: one of the biggest buildings in London…if not the biggest”. It’ll be one or the other darling, but well done on your preparation nevertheless. She ran out of time before she could show us the exact location of the community Gun Emplacements “Sponsored by Accurist”.

Bushell, with his Homer Simpson gormless smile splashed across his face, sat motionless, desperately trying to remember that Wiggly Baggins had won the Tour de France and not scored a double-hundred at Chelmsford yesterday. Such a pro.

Somewhere between the enthusiastic amateurs and the Shard in the distance (however big it may or may not be) one could just spy the scene of the crime, Park Olympia: A dozen or so thoughtfully-designed, and on a few occasions, strikingly beautiful stadia dotted around what looks like the industrial storage facility next to Heathrow’s Terminal 4.

 If not exactly a war-zone that Kate Adie would be proud to report from, then something that needs the help of the Olympic torch and an accelerant. My knowledge of the English language is not advanced enough to express my sentiments on the bit of sculpture in the middle.

So, at last the sun has come out, as if to welcome the world’s finest athletes to our shores. (I knew it would be hot this week – Carol Kirkwood predicted snow) It certainly shone on 12 South Africans yesterday as 11 of their cricketers made life miserable for an Anglo/Bokke XI at the Oval yesterday, and the 12th – a golfer- not only won The Open at Lytham, but went a long way to dispelling the myth that no-one has ever met a nice South African. Ernie Els overcame the hapless and helpless Aussie Adam Scott who Devon Loch’ed up the home straight, playing the sort of golf that I’d be proud of – bogeying the last four holes.

Poor Adam, it’ll be tough to forget that one. Clearly his caddie Racist-Stevie Williams (it’s a double-barrelled forename), who has claimed all those Tiger Woods victories as his own, clearly lost his golden touch and should now be sacked, never to whiten our door again. Some weird mirrored symmetry in a liberal-thinking, white South African, beating a bigoted kiwi.

But never mind all that now. It’s Olympic week. So gird your loins and cheer for your boys (and girls). Cast aside your petty squabbles with racism, corruption, corporate greed, scorched earth policies and financial impropriety. This is England, after all. You should be used to it by now.

Cry God for Bradley, Rebecca and Saint George !!!

And Seb can go and fuck himself.

A Group of 4 Completely Unrelated Stories

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“Prisoner escort company hit by more blunders: Group 4 press conference called to allay public fears undermined by loss of inmates.
THE INDEPENDENT. FRIDAY 16 APRIL 1993

A carefully stage-managed press conference called in an attempt to allay public fears over Group 4’s ability to transport prisoners to court was undermined last night when it emerged that the private security firm had lost two more inmates.

These latest blunders, following the escape of three prisoners and the mistaken release of a fourth during the first week of the company’s operation, will fuel criticism that the private escort service has been a ‘chaotic shambles’.”

“G4S boss: ‘I’m Sorry’
ITN: Tue Jul 17 2012 17:27

Nick Buckles, the man in charge of beleaguered security firm G4S, insisted he was the right man to run the Olympics security contract.

The company’s chief executive has faced a Home Affairs Select Committee in Westminster over the on-going security debacle caused by G4S’ failure to deliver “as many Olympic guards as possible”.

Mr Buckles said he was “sorry and deeply disappointed” that his firm failed to meet its targets.

The scandal has resulted in the emergency deployment of soldiers and police officers and seen £400 million wiped off the market value of G4S.

There is now mounting pressure on Mr Buckles to quit his £830,000 role.”

Mr Buckles agrees security is a shambles.
The G4S chief said that his firm still planned to collect its £57 million management fee despite the ongoing Olympic security debacle.

ITV News Tue 17 Jul 2012

Nick Buckles – who insisted he was the right man to make sure the company delivered as many guards for the Games as possible – told the Home Affairs Committee:

“We’ve managed the contract and we’ve had management on the ground for two years.

We still expect to deliver a significant number of staff.”

Mr Buckles apologised and said he was deeply disappointed after the firm – which is running the £284 million contract for the London 2012 Games – failed to meet its targets.

G4S are now aiming to provide a minimum of 7,000 security guards, a long way short of the initial 15,000 promised.”

“Olympic security not compromised by G4S shortfall, says Lord CoeLondon 2012 chairman says ‘prudent and judicious’ plans have been put in place, as Jeremy Hunt refuses to criticise G4STHE GUARDIAN “

“700,000 Olympics tickets unsold.
Capacity across venues to be reduced by up to 500,000 tickets across the tournament

THE INDEPENDENT TUESDAY 17 JULY 2012

Around 700,000 Olympics tickets are yet to be sold while capacity at a number of football games has been reduced, organisers said today.

Locog said 250,000 football tickets were currently on sale while 50,000 tickets are available to buy for other sports at the moment.

In addition to this, 200,000 football tickets and 200,000 tickets for other sports are due to go on sale after being returned by Olympics committees from around the world.

Organisers said there had been around one million football tickets left but these have been cut in half by reducing capacity at stadiums.

A spokesman for Locog said: “We are planning to reduce capacity across the venues by up to 500,000 tickets across the tournament.”

Allocation, Allocation, Allocation

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A bad start to a Sunday morning: It’s a sad day when a few honest and true officials spoil it for everyone else.

Yes : It’s Happy Corrupt IOC Official Day again. The day, which comes round once every four years (not to be confused with Happy Corrupt FIFA Official Day) when a national newspaper (you remember newspapers : full of worthless nasty, bent journalists who should be arrested for bribing our policemen) expose the members of the International Olympic Committee, its agents, its agents friends and its agents friends golf partners as corrupt and dishonest – willing to sell votes and/or tickets to the highest bidder.

It’s difficult to comprehend that such an esteemed organisation, which is and has been led by such good-eggs and men with spotless records such as Juan Antonio Samaranch, Jacques Rogge (though not yet Michel Platini or Sepp Blatter) would allow such rotters into their fold. I mean, for heaven sake, some of these men high up in the IOC were fine, champion athletes in their own time, so that certainly admonishes any of those from any guilt or indeed suspicion where corruption, incompetence or dodgy-dealing is concerned.

Fortunately, officials from just 54 countries are involved in the allegations – which is merely a quarter of the 204 countries competing at the games, and there is absolutely no indication or allegation that anyone from the host country, Great Britain is involved in any way whatsoever (and shame on you for ever thinking so). The straightforward, uncontroversial and glitch-free way in which tickets have been distributed in Britain (and at such competitive prices) should rule out any suspicion falling on the GB arm (or leg) of the organisation.

It cheers me to think that no-one on the home organising committee has been implicated in this most disgraceful of all alleged practices, which seems to have been carried out solely and exclusively by those Johnny Foreigner-types. Us Brits will not stand for such nonsense and skullduggery. It’s just not cricket. If we’re gonna be ripped off, we will be happy to be done so by multinational credit card, alcohol, food and soft drinks companies charging well-over-the-odds to the captive market within Olympic Park, and not by some greasy Daigo or Arab who probably had never ever heard of Lord Coe or Boris Johnson.

I dunno why we have to have ’em over here in the first place : volunteering as stewards, sleeping under our bridges, running on our tracks and winning our medals…