Games won't suffer financial meltdown - organisers

British Olympic chiefs on Friday bailed out winter sports athletes bound for the Vancouver Games after the national ski and snowboard federation was placed into administration.The British Ski and Snowboard Federation, which trades as Snowsport GB, said last month that it needed a 200,000 pounds (324,120 dollars) cash injection to keep operating, a sum that was not forthcoming.

At least 10 percent of athletes at the 2010 Winter Olympics sustained an injury and another seven percent fell ill, researchers reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine on Tuesday.The data come from the head doctors of 82 National Olympic Committees who monitored athletes' health during the February 12-28 Vancouver Games, and from "Olympic clinics" at Vancouver and Whistler.In all, 287 injuries were reported among the 2,567 athletes who were covered in the study, and 185 illnesses were recorded.

Winter Olympics organisers were sweating over deteriorating weather and the host nation's homeground gold medal jinx, just 24 hours out from the start of the multi-billion dollar February 12-28 Games.After a month of warm temperatures, which decimated snow stocks, officials were now looking at an opening weekend plagued by heavy rain and dense fog.Despite the worries, John Furlong, the chief executive of organising committee VANOC, said on Thursday the Games, which have cost in the region of two billion US dollars, will be an occasion for all Canadians.

Come downtown, but leave your car at home: that is the mantra organizers of the Vancouver Winter Olympics were reciting Tuesday as transportation, particularly the movement of people, remained a huge issue one month before the start of the Games.In a city divided geographically by mountains to the north and east, the US border to the south, and water nearly everywhere else, Vancouverites appear to be slow, or perhaps defiant, in getting the message about going without their vehicles during the Winter Olympics starting February 12 and the March Paralympics.

The 2010 Winter Olympics wrapped up in Vancouver with a nail-biting ice-hockey final between Canada and the US followed by a boisterous closing ceremony that helped erase the games’ early disappointments

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called for the world to respect the Olympic Truce and urged all warring countries to cease hostilities for the duration of the Winter Games in Vancouver."As the XXI Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver draw near, the United Nations and the Olympic Movement are once again calling for a worldwide cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Games," he said in a statement received here.

Winter Olympics organisers were sweating over deteriorating weather and the host nation's homeground gold medal jinx, just 24 hours out from the start of the multi-billion dollar February 12-28 Games.After a month of warm temperatures, which decimated snow stocks, officials were now looking at an opening weekend plagued by heavy rain and dense fog.Despite the worries, John Furlong, the chief executive of organising committee VANOC, said on Thursday the Games, which have cost in the region of two billion US dollars, will be an occasion for all Canadians.

Former Olympic champion Hiroyasu Shimizu failed to qualify for the Vancouver Winter Games Wednesday as Japan announced their Olympic speed skating squad, including 15-year-old schoolgirl Miho Takagi.Shimizu, 35, finished seventh in the 500 metres and ninth in the 1,000 metres at the national trials over the past three days in Nagano where he won the 500-metre gold medal at the 1998 Games."I gave all I have. I raced with all my memories from four years since the (2006) Turin Games," said Shimizu, a veteran of four Olympics, who is expected to retire shortly.