London 2012 Olympics diary: shooter Peter Wilson says airport delays are part of the job

One of the UK’s best double trap shooters Peter Wilson has a Middle East connection as his coach is Athens Olympic gold medallist Sheikh Ahmad bin Mohammad bin Hasher Al Maktoum from the United Arab Emirates.

The two have been  developing a new shotgun cartridge to reduce the recoil from the first shot.

“My  coach’s knowledge of ballistics is second to none and we have been looking  to reduce the recoil and increase the pattern density and this will help me at the Olympics,” Wilson said.

Wilson,24, from Dorset, described going  through airports as “a long time”, and he regularly allows five to eight hours to get the  paperwork authorised for his gun.

Wireless war on the way

Track and field journalists in Daegu have been impressed with the South Korean internet, not only that it is free, but the rate of connections is extremely fast.

Such luxury is putting pressure on the London 2012 Olympic organisers and technology partner BT, which are charging £150 for each journalist to get online and access internal Games information.

Organisers are already bracing themselves for an initial flood of criticism when international scribes hit the city a month before the Games because of the charges.

But officials say they are only recouping the costs involved in installing the required cables.

BBC scales down Olympic coverage

Britain is the only European country not to have negotiated an Olympics contract beyond 2012 and IOC observers are watching Channel 4’s coverage of the IAAF world championships with interest.

Olympic sources say the BBC is still the main contender even though the national broadcaster is struggling to find money beyond the US$100 million it paid for the London 2012 rights.

The BBC has revised down its live coverage of the London Olympics from a total of 6,000 hours to 5,000 hours across all platforms because the total broadcast footage available from the Olympic Broadcast Services was calculated wrongly.

About 2,500 hours will be live sport on television channels BBC1 and BBC3.The BBC is committed to showing every event live on some part of its media platforms.