London Day Ten early edition: But was it a Heineken?

Submitted by rickeyre on

Just behind the starting blocks, just before the start of The Great Race - won by Usain Bolt - a bottle was thrown on the tracks. There was no harm, no disruption, but a serious breach of security.

A man is in custody after having the misfortune of being seated near Netherlands judo bronze medallist Edith Bosch. The Lord Coe described this today as "Poetic Justice".

My questions: Why are bottles allowed inside the Olympic Stadium? (That would never happen at a major sporting event in Australia.) And was it a bottle of The Official Sponsor's Product?

On the subject of sponsors, Gold Coast-based nutrition specialists Inner Nutrition tweeted a good luck message to some of their sponsored swimmers:

Trickett retweeted the message of encouragement. Consequently, All Hell Broke Loose. Olympic athletes are strictly forbidden from promoting their personal sponsors between July 16 and August 15 under the IOC's draconian Rule 40. This is one of the many heavy-handed anti-competitive measures designed to maximise the ROI of official Olympic sponsors. US athletes, in particular, have been vocal in their protests against Rule 40.

" "Except as permitted by the IOC Executive Board, no competitor, coach, trainer or official who participates in the Olympic Games may allow his person, name, picture or sports performances to be used for advertising purposes during the Olympic Games."

- Rule 40

After the AOC's solicitors delivered the proverbial ton of bricks, Inner Nutrition responded by shutting their website in protest:

To take this edition out, this thirty-second TV ad for an online insurance brokerage that artfully (if inelegantly) dodges the IOC's ambush marketing rules:

More on:: 
london 2012
sponsorship
ambush marketing

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