International Capsules: Olympics minister says ticket demands unreasonable

LONDON (AP) — People still hoping to get tickets for the London Olympics won't get another shot at buying them until April.

Word on the next offering came on the same day Britain's Olympics minister rejected demands for a full accounting of sales. Hugh Robertson said Friday it is not the right time for Olympics organizers to provide details about a ticketing process that has been dogged by problems.

Robertson spoke after a London watchdog group insisted that organizers clearly show how sales break down between expensive and affordable tickets. Critics have sought the data to see if a disproportionate number of tickets have been sold at higher prices, shutting out those who couldn't pay for the most popular events.

"I think it's unreasonable to ask," Robertson said at the Track World Cup cycling event at the Olympic Velodrome. "This is the middle of a very big, complicated ticketing operation — they're trying to market tickets for 26 simultaneous world championships in one day. It's an operation that has never, ever been done before."

London Olympics organizers said they would respond to the assembly's request when ticket sales are done.

"We will do that when we've sold the other four million tickets," organizing committee chairman Sebastian Coe said in Los Angeles, where he attended the IOC Conference on Women and Sport. "I will not compromise that protocol by starting to go piecemeal into a price point here, a session there."

It has not been a good week for Olympic organizers. A report from the London Assembly said there was too much secrecy surrounding the allocation of Olympics tickets. The 25-member body, which acts as a check on London Mayor Boris Johnson, said the British public — which is putting up $14.6 billion for the event — deserves to know whether citizens ever had a shot at an affordable ticket.

Coe said two-thirds of the tickets are being sold for less than $79. He said his goal is to have full venues with people in attendance who genuinely want to see the events.

"My challenge is to sell another four million tickets, get them into the hands of the people we want to get them into," Coe said.

"We have always targeted those groups who have been unsuccessful at every stage of the process. There's a really good reasonable chance that somewhere around two-thirds of those people that started out in that process will get tickets."

The organizing committee, known as LOCOG, is a private entity and has refused to provide information for commercial reasons. But the assembly said other Olympic committees — notably that of Sydney — were able to hand over the data sooner and that London should, too.

Dee Doocey, the chair of the assembly committee that examined the ticketing process, told the BBC on Thursday that it was time for the committee to come clean.

"I suspect that there's probably not enough tickets at affordable prices available to the public as we've been led to believe," she said.

London's Olympic ticketing process has been slowed by computer problems and huge demand. A complicated lottery system in which people blindly registered for tickets and handed over credit card details before they knew what — if any — tickets they were getting added to public unease.

"I never wanted to be in a position where I was selling tickets for seats that weren't available," Coe said.

In the first round, about 22 million requests came in for the 6.6 million tickets, which range in price from more than $31 to more than $3,150. Further rounds were blighted by computer problems, and plans for future ticket sales have failed to stem public grumbling. Ticket allocations for sponsors are likely to come under even greater scrutiny, mostly because of the impression that the wealthy and connected get special treatment.

There is still confusion about the next ticket offering, expected in April. New figures indicate about 4 million tickets are still unsold, including many for Paralympic events and soccer matches.

"I don't want to sound cavalier or remotely unrecognizable of the fact that, yeah, there is disappointment out there about tickets," Coe said. "I can't see any other way of doing it."

More criticism is certain to follow comments by committee chief executive officer Paul Deighton, who told the BBC that people may have to pay at the prime vantage point of the Olympic cycle road race. The assumption had been that spectators lining the road would be able to do so for free — even at the viewing point at Box Hill, Surrey.

The race includes a 10-mile circuit around the viewing point where spectators would be able to see riders multiple times. The race finishes at the Mall in London. Deighton told the BBC it would be "perfectly appropriate ... to consider charging for the tickets."

"Box Hill is a challenging environment because it's highly protected," he said. "It's not the easiest place to watch things from or to control big crowds. It's a prime viewing slot, the men's race goes round it nine times; it's better, frankly, than being at the start and finish in the Mall."

The Olympics start July 27 and end Aug. 12.

Britain's rowers eyeing gold rush at Olympics

LONDON (AP) — British rowing's golden generation has arrived. And with less than six months to go until the London Olympics, the timing couldn't be any better.

An international powerhouse in the sport, British Olympic champions past and present are united in saying this will be their nation's most successful regatta in the modern era.

"We used to send teams along where the top boats were capable of winning but it'd be a good result for the bottom boats to get in the top 10," said Matthew Pinsent, who won three of his four gold medals alongside British Olympic great Steve Redgrave.

"But I asked Steve the other day, is there a boat outside the women's singles that will be happy with a bronze medal? The men's quad is the only possible one. That's 12 out of 13 boat classes going, 'I'm not happy with a bronze.'"

That's some billing. Britain won two golds in a haul of six medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, the country's biggest total since the 1908 Olympics — which were held in London.

Four years later and back on home soil, the expectation among a squad which topped the medals table at the world championships in Slovenia last year is for far more.

"The possibilities of what we could achieve are endless," Mark Hunter, the reigning champion in the lightweight men's double skulls, told The Associated Press. "All of our boats have a chance of winning an Olympic medal."

Hunter and partner Zac Purchase are seeking a third straight world title this year and are shoo-ins for selection for the Olympics. But British coach Juergen Groebler won't have it so easy elsewhere.

Groebler, a former East Germany coach who has been part of Britain's coaching staff since 1992, has a deep pool of talent from which to choose. Some big names are going to be left disappointed.

"Juergen isn't immune to all this. He'll be tossing in his sleep now, there's no doubt about it," Pinsent said.

The biggest selection problem for Groebler, who has led crews to gold at every Olympics since 1972, will undoubtedly come in the men's four.

His main charges are Pete Reed and Andrew Triggs-Hodge, Olympic champions in the four at the Beijing Games who have found life more difficult as a pair.

Reed and Triggs-Hodge have lost their last 14 races to the New Zealand pair of Eric Murray and Hamish Bond, and could well be moved back to strengthen the fours. That would mean splitting up a crew of Ric Egington, Alex Gregory, Tom James and Matt Langridge, who went through 2011 unbeaten.

"It's the hardest decision Juergen will have had to make since he's been in the UK," Pinsent predicted. "But in some ways, the decisions at the top of the squad are nice decisions to have."

With Pinsent and Redgrave — the latter a winner of gold medals at five straight Olympics from 1984-2000 — long since retired, Britain no longer has the household names that made the country synonymous with Olympic rowing.

Britain's closest thing to a star — at least domestically — is Hunter, who in tandem with Purchase is being widely spoken of as a surefire bet for gold on Dorney Lake in July and August.

The lightweight pair teamed up for the first time in 2007 and won Britain's first ever Olympic lightweight title 12 months later.

After a year off, Hunter and Purchase returned to the water, shook off the rust and won two straight world golds in 2010 and '11.

It's no wonder the pressure is on the pair to be back on top of the Olympic podium this year.

"It's very different to 2008, though," Hunter said in a telephone interview shortly after his return to the Leander Club in Henley following a punishing two-week training camp in Portugal. "Then, the country was quite down and miserable in terms of being at the start of the recession. The GB team was doing really badly, too.

"But then we go to the Olympics and do massively well, better than all expectations. From that moment, it built up the excitement and the pressure for 2012. The profiles of all rowers have got bigger and bigger because it's a home Olympics. The anticipation is much different."

With a full crowd expected for every session, British rowing is going to be under the microscope like never before.

"We're used to rowing heats in front of grandstands that have our parents and few dogs," Pinsent said. "At this Olympics, every session's been sold out.

"They are going to turn up to Dorney and go, 'Oh my God.' And that's when you are racing your heats. It'll be like Saturday afternoon at the Henley Regatta every single race."

-- Steve Douglas

Saudi female athletes challenge Muslim norms

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Behind concrete walls and out of sight of men, Saudi women wearing shorts and short-sleeve shirts meet three times a week to play soccer in an all-female club in Saudi Arabia's port city of Jeddah.

Cheering them on is Jeddah King's United coach and striker Reema Abdullah, who also is leading a campaign in the ultra-conservative Muslim country to allow women to participate in sports and compete internationally.

Saudi Arabia has never sent a woman to compete in the Olympics. Human rights groups say the country is violating the International Olympic Committee charter's pledge of equality.

In a report Wednesday, Human Rights Watch called on the IOC to require that Saudi Arabia's participation in the London Olympics be contingent upon the Arab country allowing all girls and women to play competitive sports.

Saudi Arabia's male athletes have so far qualified in several track and field and equestrian events for the London Games. There's a chance male athletes also will qualify in archery and they are hoping for a wild card invitation in shooting.

However, plans to send women to the Olympics remain wrapped in secrecy.

"We will watch the London Olympics and we will cheer for our men competing there, hoping that someday we can root for our women as well," Abdullah told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Jeddah.

"When Saudi women get a chance to compete for their country, they will raise the flag so high," the 33-year-old Abdullah said. "Women can achieve a lot, because we are very talented and we are crazy about sports."

Since Abdullah put together Saudi Arabia's first female soccer club in Jeddah in 2006, teams have popped up around the country, including in the capital, Riyadh, and in Dammam, the biggest city in the oil-rich eastern province.

In 2008, seven female teams played in the first ever national tournament as part a clandestine and segregated women's league. Abdullah's Jeddah King's United finished first.

Members of the team play not in a stadium but on what Abdullah describes as "a proper size football field with grass that is surrounded by a wall."

The current roster includes 35 women, as young as 13 and up to 35. Outside the segregated premises, the players wear long trousers, long-sleeved shirts and specially designed head scarves to cover their hair, Abdullah said.

What they are doing is illegal, even though there are no written laws in Saudi Arabia that ban and restrict women from participating in sports. The stigma of female athletes is rooted in conservative traditions and religious views that hold giving freedom of movement to women would make them vulnerable to sins.

Saudi women bear the brunt of their nation's deeply conservative values, often finding themselves the target of the unwanted attention of the kingdom's religious police, who enforce a rigid interpretation of Islamic Shariah law on the streets and public places like shopping malls and university campuses.

"Nobody is saying completely 'no' to us," Abdullah said, adding that only a fraction of Saudi Arabia's female population — attending all-female private schools and universities — is generally tolerated to participate in sports.

"As long as there are no men around and our clothes are properly Islamic, there should be no problem," she said.

But there is a problem and a senior sports official, who said rulers in the kingdom are not opposed to women's participation in sports, described efforts to include more girls and women into sports as "a fight between old and new" attitudes.

"We are supporting women here to be in sports but that means fighting deeply entrenched traditions in Saudi Arabia," the official said in a phone interview Wednesday. "We are trying to overcome them and we are seeking support from the IOC to have a woman in our delegation at the London Games."

The official spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The IOC has previously criticized the Saudis for failing to send women athletes to the Olympics. However, according to Human Rights Watch, the IOC hasn't attached any conditions to the nation's participation in the games.

In Wednesday's report, the New York-based group said that Saudi government restrictions put sports beyond the reach of almost all women in the Gulf nation.

There is no physical education for girls in public schools and no money allocated for women's sports in the country's institutions, including the youth ministry, the Saudi national Olympic committee and Saudi sports federations.

"It's not that Saudi Arabia doesn't have the money to do this or women who want to," said Christoph Wilcke, author of the 51-page report titled "Steps of the Devil" and a senior researcher in Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division. "We have listened to Saudi promises for decades. This is not good enough."

The report's name comes from the comments of some powerful Saudi clerics who oppose sport as "steps of the devil" that would lead women to un-Islamic behavior and moral corruption.

Saudi Arabia's Persian Gulf neighbor, Qatar, and Brunei also have never sent a women to the Olympics. Oil-rich Qatar, which like Saudi Arabia follows a strict version of Islam, has been feverishly working to escape the stigma that comes with failing to include women.

Doha's bid for the 2020 Olympics has added the pressure to include women on Qatar's team in London. The country's sports officials emphasize huge efforts and considerable resources they've invested into changing mindsets that led to Qatari women competing in international tournaments for the past three years, including the 2010 Youth Olympics in Singapore.

Very slowly, some changes are also taking place in Saudi Arabia, said Lina Almaeena, a basketball player in Jeddah. Her team, established in 2003, has 16 women. They rent a gym in one of the city's private universities for women to play three times a week.

"Five, six years ago women in sports was a taboo," Almaeena said in a phone interview. "Now we are on TV and in the newspapers all the time because the interest is high since there are so many health problems women and the society is facing."

The IOC charter states that sports are a right for everyone and bans discrimination in practicing sports on the basis of gender.

"The IOC strives to ensure the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement are universal and non-discriminatory, in line with the Olympic Charter and our values of respect, friendship and excellence," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said in a statement.

"NOCs (national Olympic committees) are encouraged to uphold that spirit in their delegations. The IOC does not give ultimatums nor deadlines, but rather believes that a lot can be achieved through dialogue."

As a result of talks, Adams said Saudi Arabia included a female equestrian, Dalma Rushdi Malhas, in the country's delegation to the 2010 Youth Olympics. Malhas won a bronze medal in show jumping in Singapore, Saudi Arabia's first ever medal at an Olympic event for a female athlete.

Malhas may be invited to participate in the London Games by the international equestrian federation, and Saudi's national Olympic committee has indicated it won't interfere if she is invited.

-- Barbara Surk

Coe back in L.A. feeling nostalgic

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sebastian Coe walked onto the track at the University of Southern California and memories of winning his second straight gold medal in the 1,500 at the Los Angeles Olympics came flooding back.

"It was quite emotional," he said Friday after speaking at the opening session of the International Olympic Committee's Conference on Women and Sport. "It was like as though it was yesterday."

Actually, it was nearly 28 years ago that Coe became the only person to win successive Olympic titles in the 1,500, winning his second gold on a hot July day in an Olympic-record time.

Coe actually competed at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a couple miles south of the USC campus he visited Thursday to meet with some U.S. swimmers who hope to compete in this summer's London Games.

"I find it more evocative going back to USC," he said, citing his long friendship with USC track coach Ron Allice.

This time, Coe didn't sneak into the Coliseum like he did in 2000, when he was in town and hopped over a locked fence to check out the vast empty stadium. The running track he won on is long gone, having been overtaken in favor of more seating for USC's football games.

On the day of the 1,500 in 1984, Coe ducked into an older building near the track to warm up in the cool indoor air.

"I stumbled into a room and I just sort of lapped around there and all of a sudden all these rhythmic gymnasts came in," he said. "There was this bizarre scene of me warming up for one of the biggest races in my life and all these 16-year-old girls with ribbons and balls going around.

"It's funny what I remember."

As chairman of the organizing committee for the London Olympics, Coe is in a position to create a memorable experience for a new generation of athletes. He successfully fought to preserve a scaled-down Olympic Stadium after the games end, and helped land the 2017 world track and field championships for the venue.

"We've nailed the legacy there," he said.

"Anybody winning in London this year, I know they will now be able to come back in 20, 30 years' time with their kids or grandchildren and say, 'Hey that's the stadium I won in.'"

Having gotten into the Coliseum on his own in 2000, Coe walked around and found the Wall of Honor. He spotted his name and that of close friend and fellow Brit Daley Thompson, the Olympic decathlon champion in 1980 and '84.

"I just remember having such a nice time here," he said. "I've got friends that I made during the games here that I'm still in touch with who I met working in the village. It was a fabulous games to be at."

Coe recalled the city's famously clogged freeways were nearly empty during the games, as were the yellow school buses used to transport the athletes to their venues.

"I remember sitting on with sort of one or two people," he said. "I felt I was in sort of a Norman Rockwell world, those yellow buses with sort of (David) Hockney-esque skies everywhere, which is the one thing I really noticed here."

Coe hopes athletes and visitors to the London Olympics leave his hometown having made their own memories.

"I just want people to leave London seeing the city that I'm very proud of," he said.

-- Beth Harris

IOC says retested samples from Turin were negative

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — Doping samples from the 2006 Turin Winter Games that were retested for a new blood-boosting drug have come back negative, the IOC said Friday.

The IOC decided in 2010 to retest the samples for the presence of CERA, an advanced version of the endurance-enhancing substance EPO.

Doping samples from each Olympics are stored for eight years to allow for retesting. A validated test for CERA only became available after the Turin Games.

"We are pleased with the negative results, but this will not prompt us to let up in our efforts to stamp out cheating in sport," IOC medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist said.

The move to retest the samples came after the World Anti-Doping Agency said in May 2010 that it had received information that CERA could have been in Turin before the substance was put on the market.

Like EPO, CERA boosts the production of red blood cells in the body, increasing an athlete's oxygen uptake. Several cyclists tested positive for CERA during the 2008 Tour de France, prompting retesting of samples form the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The Beijing retests led to five athletes being caught for using CERA. The most prominent was Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain, who was stripped of his gold medal in the 1,500 meters.

There was one positive test during the Turin Games, with Russian biathlete Olga Pyleva stripped of a silver medal after testing positive for a banned stimulant.

In addition, Italian police raided the lodgings of the Austrian cross-country and biathlon team outside Turin, seizing blood-doping equipment. No Austrian athletes tested positive at the time, but six were later banned by the IOC for involvement in the scandal.

Also Friday, the IOC said that all samples from last month's Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck came back negative. Nearly 300 urine and blood tests were analyzed at the WADA-accredited lab in Seibersdorf, Austria

UK, France to hold Olympics security exercise

LONDON (AP) — Britain and France will hold a joint exercise to test their abilities to respond to a terror incident at the 2012 London Olympics.

A joint British-French defense statement on Friday said authorities from the two countries are both working on the exercise, set for March. It did not specify where it would take place.

"We will conduct a joint exercise to test our response to a terrorist incident affecting both our interests," the statement said.

The authorities said they will try to ensure that efforts to promote the safe movement of Olympics participants and visitors are closely coordinated.

French media reports say teams from India, Morocco, Senegal, Hungary and Uzbekistan are among those training in Dunkirk, northern France, ahead of the games because it's cheaper than training in England. The French swimming, basketball and judo teams will also train in northern France before the Olympics.

Security has long been a critical issue for Olympics. An attack at the 1972 Munich Games killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, making security a top priority in subsequent games.

The London games start July 27 and end Aug. 12.

Britain's rhythmic group makes Olympic appeal

LONDON (AP) — Britain's rhythmic gymnastics group is making an appeal after missing out on a place at the London Olympics.

The group failed to reach the score it needed during the first two days of the test event at O2 Arena last month. That competition also served as a second Olympic qualifier.

The team says it was under the impression all three days of the competition counted toward Olympic qualifying. Britain exceeded the required score on the third day.

The appeal will be heard by an independent body Feb. 29.

Skiing

Vonn dominates training; other skiers find trouble

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia (AP) — Lindsey Vonn led the final World Cup downhill training session on the Sochi Olympic course by a huge margin Friday, while other skiers had trouble.

Even though she stood up out of her tuck before crossing the line, Vonn still finished in 1 minute, 49.21 seconds on the Rosa Khutor slope, 1.27 seconds ahead of Tina Maze of Slovenia and 1.49 in front of Elisabeth Goergl of Austria.

"Obviously I really like the race hill. The track is perfect," said Vonn, who can clinch discipline titles in both Saturday's downhill and Sunday's super-combined. "It's a very unique track. It has everything — sidehills, traverses, flats, steeps, turns like super-G, big open turns."

Since Thursday's training was canceled due to heavy snowfalls, this was the first time skiers got to test the course since the two main jumps were shaved down following Wednesday's opening session.

Racers were getting about 25 yards of air off the tunnel jump, which is the largest on the course. However, it wasn't the jumps giving other skiers trouble.

Maze crashed into a TV cameraman in the finish area and was visibly shaken. After sitting on the snow for a while, she got up and headed into a medical tent holding the back of her head.

Swiss racer Lara Gut caught one of her poles on the fresh snow during her run, jerking her arm up awkwardly.

"I think I pulled a muscle," Gut said. "Tomorrow I'll go up to the start and hopefully it will be better."

Kelly Vanderbeek of Canada fell and did not finish, and Daniela Merighetti of Italy also lost control.

While work was done to push most of the fresh snow off the course, some remained, and warm temperatures — hovering near the freezing level — made for spring-like conditions.

"The snow is really hard to ski on, it's sticky and it's taking the skis everywhere," said Swedish standout Anja Paerson, explaining that many racers had trouble with a pitch on the upper section after an area called Devil's Spine. "That patch is really bumpy and dark."

In the downhill standings, Vonn holds a 230-point lead over Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein and is 255 points in front of Georgl with two downhills remaining after this weekend. So if Vonn maintains her lead, or even gives up some points, she will have locked up her fifth consecutive title in the sport's signature discipline.

"It's tough to be as fast as Lindsey — at the moment it's almost impossible," said Weirather, the daughter of former champions Arti Weirather and Hanni Wenzel. "But I like the course, it's really special. It's either really steep or really flat but nothing in between. So the most important thing is to get a lot of speed out of the flats."

That's why having fast skis will be key, and Vonn is confident in ski man Heinz Heammerle, who previously worked for Bode Miller.

"He's been a ski technician for 27 years, so if there's anyone who knows how to make my skis fast he's the guy," Vonn said. "So I trust tomorrow that my skis are going to be fast and all I have to do is ski well."

American teammate Julia Mancuso, however, wasn't too enthusiastic about the course after placing 12th in the final training, 2.54 seconds behind Vonn. She noted that there are two uphill sections, which is unusual for downhill.

"The first one is kind of cool because you go into a jump, then the bottom one with the sidehill traverse is kind of strange," Mancuso said. "I just think they set downhill a lot more conservative now. ... They've set big turns that don't flow very well."

-- Andrew Dampf

Bobsled

Meyers of U.S. is in chase at bobsled worlds

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. (AP) — Brian Shimer figures it's time to give Elana Meyers a nickname.