Athletes waiting for funding to finance their training complained of delays by Chancellor Gordon Brown in allocating monies to the British Olympic Association (BOA) (E. Harris & P. Waugh, Evening Standard, February 15, 2006). The BOA has stated that it needs £500 million to develop young athletes. The Chancellor refused to announce a decision until after the March 2006 Budget. Three athletes announced that they were quitting because finance had not been made available.

Forced removal - population displacements

East London faces the break up of the largest concentration of amateur football pitches in Europe (home to the Hackney and Leyton Sunday League), relocation of a local cycle track, running and walking routes. There will be displacement of other uses, including three Travellers' settlements, artists' studios, and Clays Lane Peabody Estate (formerly Clays Lane Housing Co-operative, now managed by Community Based Housing Association [CBHA]). Over 400 University of East London students, also based at Clays Lane, were evicted by the University in advance of the bid decision in July, many in the throes of their exams. The impact of relocation on firms in the Lower Lea Valley is considered in Section 2.2 below.

On the face of it, this should be a golden era for Britain's public swimming pools. The government is constantly urging us to do more exercise. And ministers have pledged to improve sporting facilities in the run up to the London Olympics in 2012. But despite that, hundreds of local pools are increasingly shabby and some are threatened with closure.

Adedoja Atanda is 13. She likes dance, violin and football and, all things being equal, she is destined to take part in the 2012 Olympics.

The sports minister, Richard Caborn said: "There is a very serious negotiation going on between West Ham and the Olympic authorities about the stadium. Talks are going on about whether they could do something similar to Manchester City when they took over the Commonwealth Games stadium in 2002."

There are choppy waters ahead for swimmers in Oxford after it was revealed there is no cash to build an Olympic-size pool for the city.

Britain is to get its first school of excellence in darts as part of an effort to achieve Olympic status for the game.

An attempt to use women's football to railroad through a British men's team for future Olympic games has been condemned as "bizarre".

THE Government wants two million people to take part in large scale athletics events in the run up to the 2012 Olympics, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said yesterday.