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London 2012: Recycling cyclists as precious metal
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What happens to the 90 per cent of football's apprentices who are told "you're fired" when they fail to make the grade in their club academies? Usually there is no sugaring their pill, but now some may be offered a free transfer - into another sport. UK Sport are about to enter discussions with the Football Association to fast-track some of these disappointed Rooney wannabes into different team sports with the hope that some may end up as Olympians at London's 2012 Games.

First landmark reached in London 2012 development
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A key landmark for the 2012 Olympic Park was reached yesterday when the first underground tunnels on the 500-acre site in Stratford, east London, were completed, paving the way for building to begin next summer. Clearing and cleaning the site is the first of 10 targets which the Olympic Delivery Authority had set to be achieved by the start of the 2008 Games. The other targets include:

Blade Runner: One man's amazing race to take part in the Olympics
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On the face of it, Oscar Pistorius's achievement in finishing second over 400 metres at the South African athletics championships over the weekend was a respectable one. His time of 46.56 seconds was not far off the lower qualifying time for this year's World Championships, and given that he is only 20, it puts him within realistic range of a run at next year's Olympics in Beijing.

Inaction replay: Wembley was a fiasco. Will 2012 be the same?
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Some people are on the pitch, they think it's all open... it isn't yet though. Not properly. Yesterday thousands of spectators tested the turnstiles at the new Wembley stadium and cheered or jeered the players in the traditional way, attempting to fill the grand space with old-fashioned noise. But the people on the pitch were just puffing pop stars and knackered actors, and the crowds had not come to watch them. They were at Wembley to see... well, Wembley.

Watchdog 'impressed' with London 2012 budget
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The head of the International Committee's watchdog for the London 2012 Games has expressed his satisfaction after a two-day review of progress.

Tanni the great: Retirement of a sporting icon
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Tanni Grey-Thompson does not think of herself as great, even though it seems pretty obvious to everyone else. After all, this is a woman who has won 16 Paralympic medals, 11 of them gold, in an international career that - she announced yesterday - will come to an end after she races at the Paralympic World Cup in Manchester on 13 May.

Pioneering athlete Dame Tanni retires from world stage
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Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, Britain's most successful Paralympian, has announced her retirement from international competition. The 37-year-old will bow out after the Paralympic World Cup in Manchester in May.

London 2012: In the land of the giants
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At 6ft 5in, the five-time Olympic champion Steve Redgrave was the ideal person to launch an unusually specific sporting call to arms yesterday as the nation's 16 to 25-year-olds were challenged to seek places in the 2012 London Olympics.

Putin's plan: play Games the Blair way
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It was the sort of photo opportunity Tony Blair would swoon for. A dozen smiling schoolkids waiting patiently on a mountain top as their country's president puts on a pair of skis, ready to race them to the bottom of what Russia hopes will be the pathway to Winter Olympic glory in 2014.

Kenny gears up to be first on the road to London
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Olympic angst is not hard to find within British sport, whether generated by the rapidly approaching Games in Beijing or the challenge looming four years beyond them in London. While the centrepiece Olympic event of athletics in particular frets over its ability to deliver medals, other sectors of the domestic sport are operating with far greater confidence.

Athletics: Olympic flame burns bright for fireman Turner
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Ask most young lads what they want to be when they grow up and the chances are that footballer and fireman will be mentioned. As a youngster, Andy Turner was no different, but he has become instead a world-class high-hurdler who now looks likely to claim a place on the podium at next month's European Indoor Championships in Birmingham.

Injured Iraq veterans recruited to compete in the Paralympics
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Britain's Olympic coaches are to recruit injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in an attempt to boost the host nation's medal haul at the 2012 Games in London.

Wave dancer: Jenna has it all to swim for as Britain play catch-up on synchro
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Synchronised swimming is one of those activities we Brits refuse to take seriously. "More like synchronised drowning," an Olympic pundit once scoffed at something which seems a cross between Swan Lake, Baywatch and the Cirque du Soleil... all waterproof mascara, lip gloss, upside-down splits and perma-smiles.

London 2012: 'Olympics need a full-time minister'
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Parliament resumes this week amid mounting speculation that it could herald the last throw of the dice for casino queen Tessa Jowell as the Olympics minister and for 63-year-old Richard Caborn, who next month will become the longest-serving sports minister since Denis Howell. The prevailing feeling on both sides of the House, as well as in sport, seems to be that the Jowell-Caborn axis has spun its course, particularly as their tenure is being made increasingly uncomfortable by the dapper former Army major who is forging a formidable reputation not so much as a political adversary but as a politician with his finger on the pulse of sport from the grass roots upwards.

12 for 2012: No 12 Sally Conway, judo player
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The first thing you notice about Sally Conway is that she does not have a Scottish accent, even though the air is thickly redolent with Caledonian brogue as she goes about her work in a tiny church hall in the Edinburgh suburb of Leith. The second is that this delightful slip of a girl does not look capable of throwing her own weight around, let alone anyone else's.

Ervin Zador: Blood on the water
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It is one of the great, resonant Olympic images. A young man is helped from a swimming pool, blood pouring down his cheek and body. His wound, created by a Russian fist, stands also for the grievous wounds freshly inflicted by the Soviet Union upon his mother country, Hungary. Just four weeks after the 1956 Hungarian Uprising was crushed by 200,000 Soviet troops - leaving more than 5,000 dead and causing nearly a quarter of a million people to flee - water polo teams from the two countries met at the Melbourne Olympics for what turned out to be one of the most violent, politically charged encounters in Games history.

IOC plays down London budget fears
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The International Olympic Committee has come to the defence of the organisers of the London Games, saying it is "very happy" with current progress and "not unduly concerned" about the budget.

London unveils £75m 'stingray' design
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A stunning, stingray-shaped swimming complex which will straddle the entrance to the 2012 Olympics Park was unveiled by the eminent architect Zaha Hadid yesterday.

12 for 2012: No 11 Simon Mantell, hockey player
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Seoul 1988 was to hockey what Wembley 1966 was to football. When Sean Kerly's Great Britain team defeated Germany to win the Olympic gold medal, even the sports minister of the time, Colin Moynihan, openly blubbed as he sprinted on to the pitch to embrace the lads. It also provided a commentary moment almost in the same league as Ken Wolstenholme's "They think it's all over". "Where were the Germans?" screeched the BBC's Barry Davies as the third goal went in. "Frankly, who cares!"

The Big Question: How much will it cost for London to stage the 2012 Olympics?
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Why is the cost of the Olympics in the news?

Cost of Olympics rises by £900m as Jowell is forced to rework sums
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The Government finally came clean on the cost of the London Olympics yesterday, admitting the bill had already risen by £900m.

Cost of staging Olympic Games could be twice original estimate
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Planners of the 2012 London Olympics have admitted for the first time that the cost of staging the Games would be "significantly higher" than previous estimates.

Landfill charges could reach £80m
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The cost of removing hazardous waste from the Olympic site in the East End site could be as much as £80m.

World Cup warning as stadium row deepens
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England's hopes of hosting the 2018 football World Cup, said to be the dream of putative premier Gordon Brown, may rest on the future of the stadium in east London which will be built for the Olympic Games six years earlier. Not because it could become a venue for any of the matches - but because it must never be one.

Olympics head quit because of 'politics'
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The American engineer tasked with building the London Olympics has admitted he resigned due to political interference.

Perfectionist raises bar for medal hopes
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Here is the news. A British gymnast is about to employ an agent.

London will be on time and on budget
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The organisers of the London Olympics promised yesterday that the 2012 Games would be on time, on budget - and not another Wembley fiasco.

12 for 2012: No 10 Francesca Halsall, swimmer
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At the BBC's Sports Review Of The Year show last December Francesca Halsall got to meet Theo Walcott. "Yeah, it's great," she says. "I can tell everyone, 'I've met him'."

Olympic setback as chairman resigns
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The project to organise the London Olympics suffered a setback yesterday when one of its senior figures resigned amid concerns over his health.

Surf bums or Olympians? Skateboarding world divided by prospect of going to Games
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Five decades after it was invented on the back of the Californian surf craze, devotees of skateboarding still cannot agree whether it is sport or art.

Darts steps up to the oche to stake claim for Olympics
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From Jocky Wilson to Andy Fordham, its belt-busting legends have hardly exuded an image of Olympia. But the sport of darts is to stake its claim to a place in the 2012 Games by opening its first British academy of excellence.

Woodward lands new Olympic role
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Sir Clive Woodward has been handed the task of boosting Britain's medal prospects at future Olympic Games. Woodward, who coached England to their Rugby World Cup triumph in 2003 before trying his hand with less success at Southampton Football Club, has been appointed the British Olympic Association's new director of élite performance.

Coe recalls Christie to fold with 'mentor' role in build-up to 2012
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Linford Christie, conspicuously absent from involvement in Britain's quest for the 2012 Olympics, has been recalled to the fold. The former Olympic 100m champion, who tested positive for nandrolone after he had retired from top-class competition and has since had a public row with the man who headed the bid to earn the 2012 Games, Seb Coe, was named yesterday by UK Athletics as one of four mentors for the build-up to London.

12 for 2012: No 7: Greg Rutherford, long jumper
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Greg Rutherford is not the first teenaged sporting prodigy to sprout from his family tree. Back in March 1902 his great-grandfather, Jock Rutherford, made his debut in the First Division - the old Premiership of English football - at the age of 17 years and 139 days. He scored for Newcastle United in a 4-1 home win against Bolton Wanderers at St James' Park. He was only 19 when he won the first of 11 caps on the right wing for England.

Hamburg builds on cup success for 2016 bid
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Hamburg is considering a bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games following the success of the football World Cup in Germany.

12 for 2012: No 6: Shelly Woods, Paralympian
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The trouble with icons is that they are such a hard act to follow. None more so than Tanni Grey-Thompson, who will be 37 next month, and has been wheelchairwoman of the board for some 20 years. She is not sure she will be in Beijing, and if she is in evidence at London 2012 one hopes it will be as something like chair of UK Sport or Sport England, though one doubts the powers that be have the bottle to appoint anyone quite as accomplished or forthright.

Ski federation clears coach Mayer of doping in Turin
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The Austrian Ski Federation has cleared the banned Olympic coach Walter Mayer of any involvement with doping at the recent Games in Turin.

12 for 2012: No 5: Hannah Miley, swimmer
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It is still six years away, and a million metaphorical miles from the tranquil corner of rural Aberdeenshire in which she happens to live, but Hannah Miley does not have to close her eyes to imagine what it might be like to dip a competitive toe in home water at the Olympic Aquatics Centre in the east end of London in 2012. Sitting in the living room of the Miley home in a quiet valley west of Inverurie, Hannah can still hear the echo of the roar she experienced at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatics Centre two months ago.

Man of Steele key to Britain's progress
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You might say John Steele has had an eventful baptism as one of the prime movers and shakers in British sport. When he took up his post on 1 July last year it was quickly apparent that this was an innovative appointment. Here was someone who actually spoke the language of the playing field.

London faces 'extremely tight' timetable for 2012
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The new timetable for London to be ready for the 2012 Olympics is "extremely tight", the Olympics Delivery Authority chief executive, David Higgins, said yesterday.

McGlynn pushes the boundaries back
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Wayne Rooney's toe woe may signify the end of the world, or at least the World Cup, for the citizens of Manchester and beyond, but a refreshing sense of normality pervades down the road from Old Trafford at Sport City, where hundreds of athletes from an assortment of nations have been doing their thing all week in pursuit of medals in another World Cup.

12 for 2012: No 4: Nick Woodbridge, modern pentathlete
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Old Aristotle was on the ball when he mused back in ancient Greece: "The most beautiful sportsmen of all are the pentathletes", an observation endorsed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who brought the sport into the modern Games "because it produces the ideal, complete athlete, testing a man's moral qualities as well as his physical resources and skills".

Athletics hit by funding penalty for poor results
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Track athletes appear to have been punished for their poor performance in recent events by being given only a meagre share of extra Government funding aimed at boosting Britain's medal haul at the London Olympics.

Body blow as boxing is out for the countdown to 2012
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On a noticeboard at the England headquarters in the Commonwealth Games village there was an invitation to answer jokey questions posed by other team members. One asked: "What do you say when you see an athlete on the training track?" Underneath, someone had scrawled: "Hello, stranger."

12 for 2012: No 3: Giles Scott, Laser sailor
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At Hayling Island Sailing Club it is early morning, an hour regarded by any self-respecting student as part of that voluntary curfew during which he seeks the further embrace of sweet Morpheus. Not this teenager. Seemingly impervious to the chill gusts which buffet him, Giles Scott prepares to launch his Laser craft.

Secrecy and a shifting skyline: Changed nation relishes the great ball of China
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The workers at Wukesong perch like birds on a wire at the top of the towering pylons that will soon support the roof of the 18,000-seat indoor stadium for the 2008 Olympics basketball competition. Still unaccustomed to Western visitors, they stare, then giggle for a picture.

Brown to lift funding for 2012 Games and target fourth place
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British athletes' prospects for the 2012 Olympics should receive a significant boost tomorrow when the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, unveils multi-million pound support for élite sports.

DeGale sets off on the Amir trail to fame and fortune
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Fresh, and still fresh-faced, from his sixth and sweetest professional victory, Amir Khan was back with the boys last week, turning up to encourage his former amateur mates as they prepared to fly off to Melbourne for the Commonwealth Games. But the Olympic silver medallist did more than wish them bon voyage. That night he stepped into the training ring at Crystal Palace, joining in their final squad session and passing on a hint or two that might help some of them to return with bullion of their own.

Generation Games for island family
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It was unavoidable, but Olivia Rawlinson had to miss all six of her scheduled lessons on Friday. "Science, RE, Maths, English, Modern Languages - that's Spanish - and History," the Ramsey Grammar School pupil counted. Given her exceptional circumstances, it seemed fanciful to suppose she might have been required to hand in a note explaining her absence from school. "Yeah, I did, actually," she countered. What? Saying, "I'm sorry, but Olivia won't be at school for three weeks because she's going off to Melbourne to swim in the Commonwealth Games"? "Yeah," Olivia said, laughing.

Clegg satisfied with Britain's haul as funding row looms
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Having set Britain's Winter Olympians a target of one medal "of any colour" at the Games which concluded here yesterday, the team's chef de mission, Simon Clegg, was hardly going to damn them in his overall assessment.

An email conversation with Rhona Martin: 'A skip has to keep their nerve on the last stone...'
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Did having won the Olympic gold in 2002 mean there was less pressure on you at the Games we've just had? No. Because what's on your mind is this Olympics. I was more disappointed that we didn't get past the round-robin stages. In 20 years' time I will still have won the gold medal in 2002, but at this moment in time that is no consolation.

Rocca goes from favourite to fall guy in 34 seconds
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The uproar of dismay that greeted home favourite Giorgio Rocca's early fall on the Sestriere Colle slalom course yesterday will have rumbled around the whole of Italy.

Winter Olympics Briefing
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Biathlon 1: Greis the golden boy of few words

Moynihan warns of funding 'travesty'
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After Shelley Rudman's sterling silver it seems to have been more or less downhill all the way for Team GB in Turin. Even the curlers, in the end, suffered from medal fatigue.

Is it the Olympics? Or the sequins? Ice dance fever hits UK
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The Winter Olympics are drawing to a close in Turin today, but the impact of the Games could be felt in Britain for a generation. For figure skating is witnessing a surge in popularity unlike anything seen since the days of Torvill and Dean.

Bronze medal eludes Britain's brave quartet
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A campaign that had begun so brightly ended sadly here yesterday for the four Scots comprising Britain's male curling team as they missed out on a bronze medal two days after the prospect of gold or silver had disappeared with the last stone of their semi-final against Finland.

Sport on TV: Curling from small-town America is like 'Fargo' on ice
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As the monks at Paisley Abbey who first sent big lumps of stone across a frozen pond in 1541 surely realised (thanks for that, Dougie "Motty" Donnelly), you don't need to hype curling. I remember measuring my pulse during England's penalty shoot-out against Argentina in France '98 and registering some alarm when it topped out at 180bpm. During the final end of the men's Olympic semi-final on Wednesday it reached 120, which I think compares favourably.

Austrians fear future Games ban
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An Austrian official yesterday voiced fears that the team could be banned from future Games by the International Olympic Committee following last Saturday's doping raid on their cross country and biathlon skiers here.

Italy quick to embrace Fabris in show of national delirium
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If there was any doubt in Enrico Fabris' mind about his new-found status within Italian sport, it was expunged yesterday morning when he woke up to a tidal wave of praise heading in his direction.

Murdoch's men trumped by Finland ace on final delivery
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For a few heady moments here last night, David Murdoch's men thought they were into the Olympic curling gold-medal play-off after the British skip's last delivery had drifted perfectly into place and left his Finnish counterpart, Markku Uusipaavalniemi, needing to draw the final delivery directly into the centre of the house. They were wrong. After a lengthy discussion, Uusipaavalniemi held his nerve to see his team through to tomorrow's final against Canada.

Skater's historic third medal causes hysteria in Italy
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The Italian speedskater, Enrico Fabris, urged calm yesterday after winning a gold medal at the 1500 metres here and becoming the only Italian male athlete ever to have won three medals at one Games. As congratulations poured in from all over the country, including Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Fabris tried to keep the fuss to a minimum.

Retirement talk works wonders for Dorfmeister
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As one observer here noted, Chemmy Alcott has now got the same number of Olympic medals at the Turin Games as the great Bode Miller. That is, none.

Silver seals Maier's return
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Hermann Maier returned to the Olympic podium on Saturday after a gap of eight years - and five years after the motorcycle accident which almost cost him a leg. Although the Austrian was unable to add to the two Olympic golds he earned at Nagano in 1998, he was hardly discontented with the silver he took in the super-giant slalom behind Norway's Kjetil Andre Aamodt.

Austrian anger over drugs raid on night before ski relay
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The most predictable result of the 2006 Winter Olympics duly occurred here yesterday when Austria came last in the 4x10km cross-country skiing relay after an overnight armed police raid of the team's rooms on suspicion of drug use.

Martin's hopes of retaining gold fade
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Rhona Martin's defence of the Olympic curling title her team won four years ago was looking forlorn last night after a 10-5 defeat by Japan. "It was very important," Martin said. "It's put us out of the Olympics."

12 for London 2012
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If young cyclist Anna Blythe gets among the medals when the Olympic Games land in London six years hence, she will have ridden along a remarkable pathway from playground to podium. For until the Leeds schoolgirl was invited to try her pedal power during a talent-spotting exercise con-ducted by British Cycling, the only time she had been on a bike was doing her paper round.

Nicola and Jackie follow Shelley's tracks
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Murdoch ready for glory ride
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The cloud which hovered gloomily for much of last week over Britain's Winter Olympics may have found a silver lining but whether there is to be another crock of gold seems again to rest in the hands which guide the stones towards their destiny.

Winter Olympics Briefing
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Figure skating: Volchkova falls foul of bad finger

Jacobellis' grab loses grip on gold
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Winning with a flourish is important in the subculture that is snowboarding. Some in the sport have even hinted that the flourish itself is more important.

Bromley fails to match girlfriend's silver service
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Kristan Bromley saw the imminent prospect of an Olympic medal vanish in the skeleton event here last night, just minutes before his girlfriend Shelley Rudman stepped up at her medal ceremony 60 miles away in Turin to accept the silver she won in her skeleton competition on Thursday. Life can be sweet, life can be cruel; sometimes it can be both.

Rudman revels in dream-like medal moment
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The morning after the night before dawned somewhat fuzzily for Britain's skeleton silver medallist, Shelley Rudman, as she adjusted to the effects of "a few glasses of champagne" taken when she went clubbing until the early hours.

Sport on TV: Each ice age revives thrills and chills of near disaster
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It's the same every four years: at first you think life's just too short to watch more than about 90 seconds of ice skating at any one time. Then something about it, probably the proximity to disaster, draws you in.

At 85mph, on a tray, face inches from the ice, novice races to Britain's first Olympic medal
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Until 40 months ago, Shelley Rudman was, by her own admission, a competent but unexciting club-level hurdler. Then she spent £400 on a "have-a-go" winter sports holiday.

Olympic poster star gives up on 2012 in funding row
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He was pictured vaulting over the "Gherkin" Swiss Re tower to the slogan "Leap for London" in an image that helped the capital secure the 2012 Olympic Games. But reality has proved far less glamorous for Ben Brown, 21, who has been unable to secure the £15,000 he needs to train full time. He has quit gymnastics and is working in a bank.