London 2012 - even a bit about the Olympics!
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Closing Ceremony

14 August 2012

I think you really had to be there. The pictures tell a different story from two dimensional television and capture much more of the atmosphere and simple happiness of everyone who was there (except David Cameron).

Our closing ceremony downer

13 August 2012

I can only hope that no one defines the Olympics as Russell Brand dressed as Willy Wonka singing ‘I Am the Walrus' from atop a psychedelic camper van.

Time to be honest - the closing ceremony was a bit of a let down. Maybe because teh Games ahd been so great. Maybe becuase there had been no time for any sort of dress rehearsal. 24 hours before the ceremony the stadium was still a sports arena.

But the closing ceremony of the London Olympics failed to hit the heights of Danny Boyle's stupendous Opening Ceremony 16 days earlier.

And instead of symbolism we got celebrity - and mostly mediocre ones at that.

The 80,000 crowd did not care too mcuh; they were partying. But it says a lot that the biggest cheer of the night went to the half a dozen volunteers who were called up on stage to receive bouquets of flowers from six athletes as a thank you for all the hard work they and the rest of their 70,000 colleagues had performed during the Olympics. It was one of the few class acts of the night.

The Queen had wisely decided to give the event a miss. Sadly so did most of the biggest names of British music. The only truly big names who did appear are already dead. John Lennon and Freddie Mercury.

Prince Harry represented the Royal Family and probably wished he had been over at Hyde Park where Blur, The Specials and New Order were showing the true face of British music.

As for the show: it opened with Stomp turning the London Eye into a vast percussion instrument and Timothy Spall erupting from the top of a mocked-up Big Ben to deliver Caliban's "the isle is full of noises" speech dressed oddly as Winston Churchill. A celebration of a London working day saw the Pet Shop Boys parading in angular floats while wearing Ku Klux Clan lookalike hats, One Direction performing on articulated lorries and Ray Davies stopping by to sing Waterloo Sunset.

Trouble is all the music then had to be repeated as the athletes took longer than expected to file into the arena. Though this was inspired and informal. The competitors poured into the stadium, many of them coming down the audience aisles and then filling the gaps in the vast Damien Hirst Union Jack artwork that covered the entire surface. A close up and a genuine interaction between the crowds and the athletes - the true stars of the last 16 days.

It was democratic, cheerful and ever so slightly untidy; and you could see the joy on the athletes' faces as they jigged, took snaps, swapped phone numbers and even, in the case of a couple of Frenchmen, turned exhibitionist somersaults.

The symphony of British music saw a video of John Lennon singing Imagine, the Kaiser Chiefs backed by an assembly of leather-clad bikers, Annie Lennox standing at the prow of a skeletal ship, and the Spice Girls emerging from a fleet of London cabs.

Kate Bush was on the soundtrack but she was not there. The same with David Bowie.

We even got a troupe of supermodels clad in symbolic gold.

Respect to Gary Barlow and Take That for performing in the week that Barlow and his wife had the tragedy of a still-born daughter.

Jessie J sang with Brian May of Queen. There was a karaoke clone of Pink Floyd. And the Who closed a strange night and Roger Daltrey can still sing.

But it did feel like the big names had gone awol. And that was their loss. Because this was a night when they should have been proudly British. The last 16 days were remarkable. We will not see their like again in Britain for at least a generation.

And maybe that is why the closing ceremony feels a bit less than it could have been - there was not the single awe inspiring moment that has been so much part of this celebration of achievement, sportsmanship, dedication and simple hard, hard work.

Don't stop me now

12 August 2012

Olympic medallists Sir Chris Hoy, Jessica Ennis, Victoria Pendleton, Louis Smith and Pete Reed are joined by a number of other athletes from Team GB in their own version of Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' - celebrating the success of London 2012.

Where is Mo?

Jessica Ennis - golden girl....

Mighty Mo

11 August 2011

Love this picture !

Closing concert ceremony plans

9 August 2012

The closing ceremony looks likely to be a BritPop concert. The ceremony is titled A Symphony of British Music, with the show expected to take in everything from Elgar to Adele.

Tipped to perform are:

The Spice Girls (reunited)
Kate Bush with "Running Up That Hill" (she's not toured since 1979!)
The Who
Pet Shop Boys
One Direction
George Michael (maybe with Elton John)
Muse
Madness
Adele
Queen
Paul McCartney
Annie Lennox

The closing ceremony kicks off in the Olympic Stadium at 9pm on Sunday 12 August. It is expected to last until 11.45pm.

In addition to the parade of British musical greats, there will also be a march of over 10,000 athletes, speeches from The Queen and Boris Johnson and a flag ceremony incorporating Olympic birthplace Greece, 2012 host Britain and 2016 host Brazil. Jessie J is being tipped to sing the national anthem.

And David Beckham will inevitably be there somewhere.

And if you live in the USA you will be watching long after the evening has already finished.

Heavylifters

8 August 2012

One love

6 August 2012 - 100 meters. 9.63 seconds. 41 paces.

One night - three golds

5 August 2012

One hour on one night with three golds.....heptathlon, long jump and 10,000 metres.

A mixed-race girl from Sheffield, a lad whose great-grandfather played football for England over a century ago, and a boy who arrived in west London aged nine from east Africa to make the capital his home.

Ennis, Farah and Rutherford gave GB athletics its greatest hour

London 2012: a first week full of wonder

3 August 2012 Guardian Editorial

When history books are written, what will seem important to posterity about August 2012? Certainly the power blackout that deprived more than 600 million Indians of electricity for two days could be a candidate. Perhaps Wednesday's algorithmic trading crash on Wall Street will loom larger than today, when the warning signs about off-the-leash computers have been greeted with the usual complacency. Or the collapse of Kofi Annan's Syrian peace mission may prove the emblematic event that our descendants may see as a historic whimper of the United Nations comparable to the impotence of the League of Nations over Abyssinia.

To millions in Great Britain, however, these days will live in the memory simply because of the London Olympic Games. If in fact we are standing on the brink of a global energy crisis, or a slide into a superpower proxy war in the Middle East, it does not feel that way.

Some may feel qualms about the degree to which the Olympics have so rapidly become the only story in town. But the truth is that there is an unprecedented national festival going on, celebrated as proudly in Glasgow as in Truro, Coleraine, Otley or Kensington – all home to week one UK medallists. It is hard to think of anything to compare with this for shared national good feeling in the modern era.

As a global sporting spectacle, the ingredients range from the fingertip defeat of Michael Phelps by Chad Le Clos in the 200 metres men's butterfly on Tuesday, and his peerless victory over Ryan Lochte two nights later in the medley, to Marianne Vos's commanding win in the rain lashed women's cycling road race and Bradley Wiggins's nonpareil achievement of adding the Olympic time trial to his victory in the Tour de France less than two weeks previously. These were epic sporting moments to match anything of any era. Yet in some ways the essence of the Olympics is to be found far away from the biggest arenas, in the cinderella sports like archery, canoeing, shooting, volleyball and weightlifting – and in the fleeting presence, in the margins of the great contests, of the Saudi woman judo fighter, the Niger sculler Djibo Issaka. Even Federer at Wimbledon and Giggs at Wembley seem somehow marginal by comparison.

Underpinning all this have been thousands of people who will never hit the headlines but whose lives have been enriched by being part of a well-planned games. The opening ceremony was an imaginative popular triumph. London is looking great. The variety of venues – and their backdrops – have been compelling. The volunteers have been welcoming, helpful and primed. The transport system, by and large, is coping. Security has been less problematic than feared. Spectators have loved what they have experienced, including the many who simply pass the hours in the Olympic Park in front of the big screens. The atmosphere has often been electrifying. The BBC has mostly been at the top of its game, vindication that only a national free-to-air broadcaster can provide what the public deserves.

Yes, there have been persistent gripes about catering and queues. Yes, a largely casual workforce has sometimes been peremptorily treated – nothing new there. The event ticketing system has been a disgrace from start to finish. Some of the media-fanned panic about lack of early British success was a bit pathetic. Disinformation about transport chaos has helped damage the wider London economy. Hopes of a significant boost for a national economy that is already on its back are clearly optimistic. British sporting success is once again disproportionately reliant on the private schools, which 93% of the population do not attend. The longer legacy will be a vexed issue. But put all that to one side for another day. The isles are full of wonder. Barely halfway, we cry to dream again.

Wondrous and weird - barmy and British

28 July 2012

For what its worth Danny Boyle had me at Elgar's Nimrod....

London 2012: Top 10 weird moments of Olympics opening ceremony
Cockpit Footage of The Red Arrows Flying Over London for the Olympics Opening Ceremony
London 2012 Olympics: July 27 - live picture blog
What Danny Boyle's Olympics opening ceremony said about Britain's cultural landscape
Oh so British, but jolly good fun just the same
The Big Picture - Olympics 2012: Opening ceremonies

On twitter:

The Beijing Olympics relied on big special effects; London 2012 banked on nostalgia, humor, pop culture. What a spectacular show.

The Guardian headline is wrong in part. To anyone with a sense of British history, and of what has put the Great in Britain, the show hit all the right notes.

Loved the Opening ceremony, especially the fact that the Olympic greats handed the torches to the next generation. Now so excited to start!

The New York Times: "It’s hard to imagine any other nation willing to make so much fun of itself on a global stage, in front of as many as a billion viewers. It takes nerve to look silly; the cheesy, kaleidoscopic history lesson that took Britain through its past, from pasture through the workhouses and smoke stacks of the Industrial Revolution to World War I and, of course, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” was like a Bollywood version of a sixth-grade play.

But bad taste is also a part of the British heritage. The imagery mixed the glory of a royal Jubilee with the grottiness of a Manchester pub-crawl. Britain offered a display of humor and humbleness that can only stem from a deep-rooted sense of superiority."

Most of all, it showed a love of movies that celebrate British eccentricity. “Isles of Wonder” seemed most inspired by a scene from the movie “Love Actually,” in which Hugh Grant, playing the prime minister, explains that Britain is still a great nation because it is “the country of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter, David Beckham’s right foot.”

The Great British Music List

28 July 2012

It didn't make a bit of sense, but what a thrilling spectacle and what fun

The Guardian - Peter Bradshaw 28 July 2012

Danny Boyle has just made the biggest, maddest, weirdest, most heartfelt and lovable dream sequence in British cinema history. Heaven knows, hopes were not high after our sheepish "handover" performance in Beijing in 2008; we thought we would never match the Chinese and many of us were getting ready to excuse the anticipated cockups and catastrophes as proof of our supposedly superior democratic tolerance.

But Boyle's opening ceremony was the equal of Beijing and more.

He had the spectacle – chiefly, an inspired vision of the five Olympic rings being forged by the workers of the industrial revolution.

But he also had jokes and laughs; he had narrative, of a cheerfully loopy kind, with some anarchic fun, and cheeky comic turns from Daniel Craig, Rowan Atkinson and the Queen. Sometimes it looked like a 21st-century version of an Elizabethan pageant. Sometimes it looked like a seaside summer special on amyl nitrate. But it always looked great.

The Olympic opening ceremony is a very cinematic tradition. As a genre, it was pretty much invented by Leni Riefenstahl for the 1936 Berlin Games, and then given a dose of Hollywood razzmatazz for LA in 1984, with choreography inspired by the song 'n' dance routines that kick off the Academy Award ceremony. Both these influences are very serious. Boyle corrected this, and gave the ceremony two things I never believed could co-exist in a sports arena: a sense of humour and a sense of wonder. To begin with, his guiding force seemed to be Terry Gilliam, or maybe Peter Jackson. A surreal vision of bucolic Britain unfolded in a Teletubby-shire. Then Sir Kenneth Branagh came on as a glamorous Isambard Kingdom Brunel, declaimed Caliban's "isle is full of noises" speech from The Tempest with a positive spin on the word "dream". And the industrial revolution swept everything away.

The hyperreal greensward vanished, as if by magic, and the 19th century arrived, giving way bizarrely but entertainingly to Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. There was a glorious tribute to the NHS, whose care and attention to child patients was elided sentimentally but persuasively with the glories of great children's literature and its scary villains. JK Rowling made a stylish appearance. But the evening took off like a rocket with a romantic fantasia, riffing on the eternal Saturday night, social media, boy meets girl. The director shyly gave us an allusion to his own film Trainspotting, along with flashes of Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl and Ken Loach's Kes – and many more. It didn't make a bit of sense, but what a thrilling spectacle and what fun. This could be Danny Boyle's 3D multimedia masterpiece.

Mutt Romney

27 July 2012

Mitt Romney, the US Republican presidential candidate, arrived in London for the start of the Olympics. This was a goodwill trip to make friends and do some fund raising.

Instead he managed to magnificently offend his host country.

In an interview with NBC's Brian Williams, he dissed the host city, suggesting it wasn't ready for the Games:

"It's hard to know just how well [the 2012 London Olympics] will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting. The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging."

The British press tore into Romney. And much of that abuse was from the conservative right who would be Mutt's natural allies.
 
"Mitt Romney is perhaps the only politician who could start a trip that was supposed to be a charm offensive by being utterly devoid of charm and mildly offensive," The Telegraph posted an op-ed.

"Serious dismay in Whitehall at Romney debut. 'Worse than Sarah Palin.' 'Total car crash'. Two of the kinder verdicts," tweeted Daily Mail Political Editor James Chapman.

"The trip was meant to make him look presidential... it made him look like Mr. Bean," The Guardian said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron fired back:

"We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course it's easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere," Cameron said, referring to the 2002 Winter Olympics Romney ran in Salt Lake Ciy, Utah

And London's Mayor also taunted Romney during an Olympic torch ceremony in Hype Park:

"I hear there's a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we're ready. Are we ready?"

Romney was also widely mocked on Twitter:

"We have not been at war with Britain since 1812. Well done, Mitt!" Andy Borowitz Tweeted.

Romney's Olympic gaffe was just one of many laughable missteps he made during his visit to London, and only the latest in a string of gaffes that continue to plague his campaign.

Headlines and stories of the day

27 July 2012

London’s mayor takes swipe at Romney after Olympic gaffe
London 2012: time to find out who we are
Mitt Romney's Olympics blunder stuns No 10 and hands gift to Obama

Isles of Wonder

27 July 2012

Isles of Wonder is Danny Boyle's theme for the Olympic Games opening ceremony - inspired by Caliban's speech in Shakespeare's The Tempest

CALIBAN
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The Tempest 3.2.148-156

Beijing remembered

27 July 2012

20.08 on the 8th August 2008. Highlights of a famed opening ceremony.

Mind the crap

25 July 2012

A welcome addition to all of the Olympics snarkiness: here's the Daily Show's Jon Stewart laying into London's Games-related chaos.

Leaving out Becks - petty and foolish

24 July 2012

David Beckham was left out of the Team GB football team after being passed over for one of three overage spots by manager Stuart Pearce.

Beckham is recognised globally. He has played an important role in bringing the Olympics to London. People will still pay to go and watch him. And he is still scoring goals in the MLS.

No current performing athlete has done more for the London Olympics than David Beckham. And yet he doesn't even find himself in the team.

Beckham should have been in Team GB, which means he would have walked on the track on merit as one of our top athletes of all time. When he gets his knighthood then Mr. Pearce will owe him a heartfelt apology.
Instead the over age players are not exactly the sporting role models the BOA might have been hoping for: Craig Bellamy is known for having allegedly attacked a teammate with a golf club at Liverpool, while Micah Richards refused to participate in England's Euro 2012 squad after the gross insult of being put on the standby list. As for Ryan Giggs - ask his brother.

There is not a Scotsman or a Northern Ireland player in the GB squad; yet Scotland could have offered Steven Fletcher, Jordan Rhodes and Steven Davis.

In the one pre Games friendly England limped to a 2-0 defeat to Brazil.

Pearce has defended his decisions on the grounds that the game is no place for sentiment. Beckham - whose omission has attracted most controversy - may have worked tirelessly to help London win the right to host these Games, but only form on the pitch can justify a place in the GB squad

Nonsense. Sport is best when it is sentimental. And this is the Olmpics. It is about pride in wearing the shirt and no one has done that better than Beckham over the last eight years.

Team GB last appeared in the Olympic football event in 1960. Its been hard to sell tickets to Olympic football events; made harder by a squad that omits its iconic leader and that fails to represent the United Kingdom.


 

12/8 Closing ceremony :Russell Brand singing I Am The Walrus on top of a psychedelic camper van. This is the definition of a bad trip.

12/8 Highlights: David Rudisha's RIDICULOUS 800m world record.
Nicola Adams. Just anything to do with Nicola Adams, but mainly the fact she took a double decker bus to her gold medal boxing bout
Mo Farrah's sensational double gold.
Jessica Ennis - for delivering.
Greg Rutherford - white men can jump....

12/8 Super heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua sealed an extraordinary run of home success at the London Olympics by coming back against the reigning Olympic champion to win Team GB's 29th gold medal of the Games, just hours before the closing ceremony.

12/8 Of the 26 Olympic sports, 16 brought medals for the British team. While cycling, rowing and sailing continued to deliver, there was gold medal success in sports such as taekwondo, dressage and the canoe slalom for the first time.(GB beginning to sound a bit Chinese - but with a bit less coercion!)

12/8 USA beat Spain to claim London 2012 men's basketball gold

2/8 Final medal tally:
 

11/8 Mo Farah - LEGEND

11/8 Germany win hockey gold! They've beaten the Netherlands 2-1 in the final. And we'll leave the last word to Barry Davies. "In the semi-final, the Netherlands scored nine. In the final, their opponents said nein."

11/8 Luke Campbell - gold in the Olympic bantamweight boxing.

11/8 Mexico won gold in the men's football competition with a 2-1 win over Brazil

11/8 GB's Ed McKeever wins kayak gold - 200 meters.

10/8 Asli Cakir Alptekin took Turkey's first ever Olympic track gold in the women's 1,500m. But worth noting that the Turkish runner who served a two-year suspension for doping after the 2004 junior world championships - simple principle needed here - if you get caught for doping you get banned for life - this should apply whether you are American (Gatlin) British (Chambers) Chinese, Turkish etc.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport earlier this year forced the British Olympic Association to lift its lifetime ban on Dwain Chambers who was one of three repentant former dopers admitted to the team.

10/8 Men's 4x400m race "What a race! What a wonderful, wonderful race! The Bahamas come from behind to beat the Americans in the last 50m to win in 2.56.72m, ahead of the US in 2.57.05m"

10/8 Women's 4x100m relay - race; Gold to the USA! Carmelita Jeter flies home in a new world record 40.82 secs. They've not just beaten it, they've smashed it. The previous record was 41.37 sec, set by the testosterone-fuelled GDR team in 1985.

10/8 The best race last night was not the 200m. The 800m saw  a new world and olympic record, seven personal bests and two national records. The Kenyan David Rudisha stormed to gold in 1min 40.91sec - the first man ever to break 1min 41sec.

10/8 Usain Bolt's double gold: 'I'm now a legend. I am the greatest athlete to live' - such modesty!

10/8 Jade Jones wins Olympic gold after grandfather introduced her to taekwondo to 'keep her out of trouble'

A teenager whose grandfather introduced her to taekwondo to keep her out of trouble last night won Britain’s first ever Olympic gold medal in the sport.

9/8 Britain's Nicola Adams has made history by becoming the first ever woman to win Olympic boxing gold.

9/8 And Ireland's Katie Taylor has just won gold in her lightweight final.

I used to work with a talented lady called Katie Taylor - not the same methinks!

9/8 Britain have won yet more dressage gold thanks to Charlotte Dujardin in the individual event. Laura Bechtolsheimer took bronze.

7/8 Chris Hoy becomes Britain's Greatest Ever Olympian winning the Men's Keirin for his sixth Gold medal. Amazing.

7/8 Another British Gold down at the Velodrome, as Laura Trott takes the omnium.

7/8 One for the girls - Olympic Rower Denies Boner During Medal Ceremony: ‘I Swear It’s Not Erect’

7/8 Dressage: team gold for Great Britain!

7/8 Alistair Brownlee takes gold and finishes the triathlon at a jog, the Union Jack already swathed around his shoulders. Brother Johnny takes bronze, finishing 30 seconds behind.

Alistair Brownlee ran 29m 07 sec for his 10km, despite slowing down to a jog-walk in the last 200m. That was just one second behind the second Britain in the men's 10,000m race on Sunday, Chris Thompson ... despite having done a 1500m swim and a 43km bike ride.

6/8 Equestrian show jumping team gold for England - for the first time since 1948 in the rich person's sport - and Jason Kenny gold no 18 for GB in the cycling sprint.

6/8 Two huge wins for Britain yesterday:Andy Murray beats Federer to win gold - Murray and Robson then won silver in the mixed doubles.

Ben Ainslie, sailing, Finn: Ainslie become greatest Olympic sailor.

Meanwhile Ethiopia's Tiki Gelana won the London 2012 women's marathon in 2hr 23min 07sec

And of course Mr. Bolt won the 100m.

But while 2bn people around the world watched the event live on TV, the US broadcaster NBC chose to show it later. Bizarre.

6/8 One hundred metre final - brick by brick!

5/8 Ben Ainslie lays Gary Lineker to waste on the BBC.
"Will you get back in the boat for Rio in 2016?"
"Will you still be hosting Match of the Day in 2016?"

5/8 GB medal count since 1992: Barcelona 5, 3, 12; Atlanta 1, 8, 6; Sydney 11, 10, 7; Athens 9, 9, 12; Beijing 19, 13, 15; London 14, 7, 8 (and this is after week 1).

4/8 The greatest Olympian in the the history of the modern Games, Michael Phelps, has finished his career with an 18th Olympic gold, his 22nd medal, in the men's 4x100m medley relay final.

4/8 Most costly night out this Olympics - £1,400: Amount the Australian rower Josh Booth, 21, had to pay to replace the shop windows he broke in an early hours drinking session on Egham high street. His team said Booth was taken to a police station where he "fainted", and was released without charge.

4/3 4.31m passengers used the London Underground on Thursday 2 August

4/8 Brits on bikes: the women's team pursuit have just obliterated the USA in the gold-medal match of the team pursuit! Dani King, Laura Trott and Joanna Rowsell have broken their own world record.

4/8 Kat Copeland - “we’ve won the Olympics. We’re going to be on a stamp tomorrow”

4/8 Andy Murray and Laura Robson through to Olympic mixed doubles final

4/8 Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter silver in the double sculls - half a second behind the Danish invaders!

4/8 South African "blade runner" Oscar Pistorius made history as the first double amputee to compete at the Olympics.

4/8 Super Saturday ! Katherine Copeland and Sophie Hosking win women's double sculls for GB. Miss Copeland is a stunned 21 year old.

4/8 Mens four: GB gold - Andrew Triggs Hodge, Tom James, Pete Reed and Alex Gregory. Australia second and USA third.

3/8 Michael Phelps hit new heights by becoming the first male swimmer to win the same event at three successive Games. Two days after breaking the all-time record for the most Olympic medals with 19, he added a 20th - and his 16th gold - by winning the 200 meters individual medley.

3/8 Etienne Stott and Tim Baillie won Britain's first ever canoe slalom gold at the Lea Valley White Water Centre, with compatriots David Florence and Richard Hounslow taking silver. Peter Wilson won gold for GB in the double trap shooting at Woolwich Common.

Sir Chris Hoy, Jason Kenny and new addition Philip Hindes twice set new world records in the men's team sprint in winning gold.

Trouble is Philip Hindes interviewed afterwards says that "I had to crash to get a restart" in the first round....he was not in control of his bike and made a poor start. The GB team would have been knocked out. Should they have been given a second chance. No.

3/8 UK Prime Minister David Cameron on beach volleyball: "It goes on till midnight and if I hear 'We Will Rock You' one more time I'll go quite mad!"

1/8 Putting the Bad into Badminton. 8 players played to lose last night to avoid harder opponents in the knock out round. All eight women badminton players were disqualified from the London Olympics for deliberately trying to lose their doubles matches - though they have been punished for infringing the spirit of their sport but not the rules.

1/8 And the Brits have gold. Bradley Wiggins in the cycling time trial (in front of a huge crowd) and Glover and Stanning in the women's rowing pair.

1/8 Michael Phelps - 19 Olympic medals including 15 gold. No one can ever repeat that.

31/7 Was this an unbelievable 400m womens individual medley win? Why Ye Shiwen's performance raises a lot of questions?

Problems: China's swim team has a history of using performance enhancing drugs. On the other hand most 16 year old teenagres have a growth spurt that will inevitably make them stronger and fitter and in this case faster.

Sometimes these accusations are best not made. Just let the testers do their job.

*************************
If you have not seen it then try the TV show reviewed here: "Twenty Twelve." This is the BBC's web site for the show. The programme is a spoof on-location documentary (or mockumentary) following the organisation of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

And anyone who has managed or been involved in a big project will identity the plottind and sub plotting.

***********************
26/7  Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, in Hyde Park: "The Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink! off the scale! People are coming from around the world, and they're seeing us, and they're seeing the greatest country on Earth, aren't they? There are some people who are coming from around the world who don't yet know about all the preparations we've done to get London ready in the last seven years. I hear there's a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we're ready. Are we ready?"

25/7 The North Korean women's football team have walked off the pitch at Hampden Park in Glasgow after the South Korean flag was displayed beside players' names on a screen prior to their Olympic football match - as someone wrote on twitter - "If there are two flags on earth you don't want to mix up, it's North & South Korea. You'd think they'd at least f**king Google it."

25/7 Britain's Ministry of Defense says it scrambled a Typhoon fighter jet after an airplane entered restricted airspace in effect for the London Olympics.

Helicopter noises - Queen arriving? Bit late love !

"Just think: two weeks ago the world thought we were rubbish at sport and great at music" The Guardian

Forget Jessie J - this is for everyone in the stadium !

Thomas‏@SimonThomasSky: Along with Princess Anne Brian May has sported the most consistent hairdo over the last 40 years. #ClosingCeremony

For all our domestic grumpiness everyone in the stadium seems to be having a great time !

They just fired Nick Clegg out of a cannon !!

He's not the Messiah.... He's a VERY NAWTY BOY....

Karaoke Floyd - meh

Ministry of Silly Walks !!

George Michael - proof that you should always quit while you are ahead - new song is a total mess....

George Michael will be tested for performance enhancing substances when he stops singing !!

Dear Barry Davies - FFS - stop talking.....

Why couldn't a Russian win the marathon? Best national anthem !!

Kate Bush must have been left out on the wiley, windy moors. Heard but not seen. Disappointed.

So Madness, Pet Shop Boys and One Direction all lip-synched ??

Siva Govindasamy‏@SivaG
Seriously? After a great opening ceremony and a wonderful Games, this is what you guys came up with? #closingceremony #Olympic2012

New Olympic sport - 1500meter walk with oil cans strapped on your feet - very strange !

Oh ... So what's the rumour? Phil the Greek dead poorly? No Maj, no Chaz... And Henry wiv Kate... Again

@gerald_d All good - the nation rejoices to see Kate Bush and hides behind the sofa when the Spice (not really) Girls (anymore) play.

.@ajsenglish thanks for a great job with your olympics coverage - now please do the same for the paralympics. Starting 29 august. @Sport_360

Even my copy of the Sunday Times feels good today - the full page Mo Farah picture helps #feelgoodfactor

I don't want the Olympics to end - and I seriously dont want the football season to start....

@Sport_360 I had to sneak away and watch the Thai boxer get robbed in the light flyweight! The Mrs is inconsolable! And now 4hrs sleep! 

Boxing robbery in the light flyweight. Shocker from referee. Zou hanging on and won on reputation. Only one boxer was fighting. #london2012

Mens light flyweight final - China v Thailand and Thailand's one chance of a gold medal.....#London2012 - the battle of the tiny terrors!

Greg Rutherford is guesting in the Al Jazeera sports studio (@ajsenglish) - articulate, modest, genuine....he makes the Olympics very real.

RT Sports360 Mo Farah. Sensational. Double Olympic champion. Talk of an appearance at the Dubai Marathon in 2013. Sign him up now. #London2012

David Whitley‏@mrdavidwhitley
"This is my favourite stadium in the world. Every Saturday I come here and see Mo Farah win a gold." Brendan Foster has Wolstenholmed.

Stuart Storey is an athletics encyclopedia and a great asset for the Olympics global broadcast. #london2012
Stan Chart gets the gold medal for top banking scandal; beating Lloyds TSB in the final. HSBC takes the bronze from Barclays.

Iran's Hamid Soryan has won gold in the 55kg Greco-Roman wrestling - putting Iran on the same gold count as the Aussies !

But the GB footie team still managed to lose on penalties again - suspect Germans trained the S Korean penalty takers !

Amazing night for the Brits in London - Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah. Aussies must be hating this !!

Greg Rutherford - proof that white men can jump.

You can also add Beach Soccer as a 2016 Olympic sport; and wind surfing will be replaced by kite surfing !

On October 9, 2009 the IOC voted to include rugby sevens and golf on the program for the Games in Rio

Worse still - golf will be an olympic sport in 2016 in Rio - provided that they build a golf course in time !

Tennis was one of the orginal sports in the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. Ended in 1912. Came back in 1988.

3-6; 7-6;19-17 - maybe tennis does belong at the olympics after all...#london2012

Is Sir Chris Hoy the first already knighted athlete to win a gold ?? Can he be knighted twice ? #london2012

Mens coxed eights - Germany favourites - and Germany wins from Canada and GB. German boat looked like the Tirpitz! Unbeatable !

Ukraine, Germany, USA in the quadruples - this rowing lark looks much too much like hard work !

Germany always excelled at the sitting down sports :):)

Britain's first ever women's rowing gold.......China seem to be the threat in the women#s quadruple skulls - racing now !

A gold for the Brits - a nation heaves a sigh of relief - rowing - womens pair.

Showing great team unity the North Korean (#dprk) womens football team all share the same hairdresser #london2012

One of the more unlikely articles fom the Economist - Phew what a scorcher - (beach volleyball) http://econ.st/OylfVI #London2012

Just how many people can #NBC get banned from twitter after they complain about their Olympics coverage #NBCfail #shootingthemessenger

It must be time to accept that Chinese rather than French should be one of the two official Olympic languages.....#reality

Sychronised diving - these guys are as barmy as they are brilliant - I would not even stand on that platform ! #london2012

Meanwhile Honduras beat Spain 1-0 and the Spanish look less than happy - Spain go home after two defeats - funny old game !

UAE1 GB 3 - great finish from a very cool Sturridge - game turned around in 5 minutes - only one team in it now - not the one I thought !

UAE 1 GB2 - now that was a substitution !

UAE1 GB1 - there really is only one team playing football now - GB just trying to hold on....come on UAE !!

UAE1 GB 1 - Have given up on the funereal English commentary and switched to Dubai Sports @gerald_d - maybe a little over excited !!

@gerald_d Strangely the commentary is about 3 seconds behind the tv pictures which makes it quite strange to watch !

@gerald_d OSN Sports - who are taking the international olympic feed - south african commentator

Only an Olympic Broadcasting commentator would make a football match sound like a game of croquet....#london2012

Commentator on Giggs scoring - 'he'll be saying thank goodness for that" - I dont think so......#London2012

Brazil just played the best football that is likely to be seen at Old Trafford this year #London2012 :)

4.10am - time for bed - this was so much easier when the games were in Beijing !

Loved the cauldron lighting but doesn't someone need to move it cauldron before the javelin starts !?

Macca has no voice left - but I guess Hey Jude works tonight - no one needs to learn the lyrics....

If they want to play Pink Floyd maybe the track should be "Money"....

After all the Danny Boyle entertainment this is turning into some sort of sinister corporate convention - very strange.....

Mohammed Ali - a legend now and always.
 
Hi Mum - I am on tv - and I am far more interesting to look at than Jaques Rogge is to listen to.....

Funny how my twitter feed has gone to sleep just as Seb Coe is making too long a speech....

Aren't the arctic monkeys only supposed to do the winter olympics? #openingceremony

Bowie - Heroes - this has been a great soundtrack for the parade of athletes.....

RT @Queen_UK: The Empire Strikes Back. Come on TeamGB. Do it for your Queen. #olympicceremony

USA team stole the French team's berets.....

And I want a Togo shirt !

Sawasdee Krup Thailand - a few athletes and hundreds of officials !!

RT‏@SultanAlQassemi:Yay for the Syrian athletes boo for the dictator

RT‏@melissaecholima: Well the Swede are gorgeous, but they've been outfitted by the Bananas in Pyjamas! #openingceremony #pervingceremony

Then I am moving to Sweden !! So are many others I suspect.

Spain's uniforms borrowed from Primark.....

After the Marshall Islands I am moving to Senegal and then to Serbia !

RT‏@Saksith: That's not even fair to have Maria Sharapova carrying the flag for Russia! #hottestflagbearer

Qatar - female flag carrier - well done !

Paraguay may win the best frock award !!

ELO - Mr Blue Sky - wonderful soundtrack !!

Mexicans to win the hat dancing Olympics......

RT‏@pkelso: Olympic Stadium now essentially a nightclub, with better-looking clientele than any club I've ever been to

I am moving to the Marshall Islands.....

@melissaecholima Latvia brought their nation's cabin crew !!

RT‏@NelsonMandela: Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire,it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does #Madiba

Indonesia - a team of just 22 from a nation of 242 million people ????

@melissaecholima But I do now understand why the Olympic Village is such a party place !!

The first reviews are in - Best episode of It's a Knockout ever. :p

Watching the opening ceremony with two Thais - who were mystified by the whole thing and are now asleep !! #nosenseoffun

‏@DAlexanderMP: Nimrod, Suffragettes, The NHS, 007, The Armed Forces Mr Bean, Gregory's Girl, The Jam, Tim Berners Lee = A Love Letter to Britain. #Genius

Barry Davies, who is commentating on his 12th Summer Olympics, is the commentator for the international feed being shown on OSN.

RT‏@AntDeRosa: "I don't believe in God, but I believe in the people that do" - Danny Boyle #London2012

Sentimentally good. RT @arun4: Olympics inspires great advertising. P&G's Best Job in the world... http://youtu.be/NScs_qX2Okk

Dear old Boris Johnson - as Cheerleader in Chief he reminds me of Bob the Builder! Here he is in Hyde Park yesterday. www.bbc.in/MabfCs

The first man to run a mile in less than four minutes, Roger Bannister, is now the favorite to light the Olympic flame - at the age of 83.

The Olympic opening ceremony is scheduled to begin at 21:00 BST/Midnight UAE on Friday night....it will be a late night!

The more than David Beckham does to promote the Olympics the pettier Stuart Pearce looks in leaving him out of the GB football team.