Olympic notebook

* The standout moment of the Olympic Games (so far) hasn't come in any of the official events. There are two strong candidates: Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt's attempt at murder by flying bell, and the inadvertent (but repeated) Nazi salute by one of the German IOC delegation as his country's team entered the stadium during the opening ceremony.  The winner has to be bell-tosser Hunt, who thoroughly deserves anything bad that befalls him -- a view evidently shared by whoever it was that saw fit to tamper with his instrument. (It can't have been just an accident, can it?)  The German gent is, by all accounts, a decent cove who behaved with great courage during the atrocities at the Munich Olympics.

* Just a couple of weeks ago, when it was announced that tickets to the women's football competition had not all been sold, LOCOG supremo Lord Coe appeared on TV to smirk confidently that "there certainly won't be any swathes of empty seats at Olympic events, don't you worry about that".  Well, on day 1 of full Olympic competition, there were swathes of empty seats at venues for all kinds of events -- swimming, tennis, equestrianism and more.  The aforementioned Jeremy Hunt went on TV to blame....the sponsors! Apparently all those empty seats had been allocated to LOCOG's army of sponsors, who hadn't realised that they were supposed to provide bottoms to fill them.  Ordinary folk who competed in endless, poorly-organised ballots yet failed to get tickets are mightily (and justly) aggrieved. **

* The empty seats furore is the latest example of an event in which LOCOG and its friends in the Government seem certain to win the gold medal: buck passing.  LOCOG can't really do anything about the sponsors because it sold the soul of the Games to them a long time ago and has allowed them a bizarre and quite possibly illegal monopoly on services.  (Two examples among many: you can't use Mastercard or Amex in the Olympic Park, because Visa is a sponsor; and if you dare to wear anything with a Pepsi logo to any events, you may be denied entry, because Coca Cola is a sponsor).  Or think back a couple of weeks to the security meltdown:  all the fault of the contractor, G4S, apparently. No blame attached to LOCOG,  either for possibly picking the wrong company in the first place, or for drastically underestimating the scale of security it needed until late in the day.  

* It's early days, but I just have a bit of a queasy feeling that the UK medal count may come up a bit short of the media's inflated expectations.  A lot of hope is riding on the people who performed so brilliantly in Beijing four years ago -- Rebecca Adlington, Victoria Pendleton, Phillips Idowu and so on -- yet it's actually quite unusual for athletes to be able to carry over the very top level of performance from one Olympiad to another.     I hope I'm wrong, and as the UK specialties (the so-called sitting down sports like cycling, rowing and equestrianism) aren't yet in full swing, maybe I am.

* The head of UK Athletics, Charles van Commenee, seems to be a very unpleasant man.   Maybe we can sic Jeremy Hunt on him.

** UPDATE 30 July: this one will run and run! Evidently someone has suggested quietly to Lord Coe that it's not a good idea to diss the paymasters, so he's no longer blaming the sponsors for the empty seats.  Now it's all down to Olympic officials failing to turn up and use seats reserved for them.  Judging from the number of vacant places in the last two days, there must be a huge number of these folk.  In the meantime, students and the military (when they're not too busy providing security) will be deployed to fill the seats and spare LOCOG's blushes. I seem to recall that some smart person warned us a long time ago that this would happen.  Oh, that's tight -- this guy.