The London Olympic Committee have announced today that they are abandoning the traditional "First Past the Post" system for the games in 2012. "The idea is simple", said minister Tessa Jowell, "The cost of the games has soared since our original estimate and now stands at well over GBP10 billion, whilst the length of the games remains at just 16 days. We wanted to find a way of extending the interest without increasing the cost and we have learned a huge amount from the recent election. The ballot lasted 15 hours and the Conservatives got the most votes, but discussions about who would form the next government continued for several days!"
The idea is simple for field events and has already been tested in a regional event where a modest crowd witnessed the 88m Javelin thrown by Robert Templeton. However after the distances had all been verified the two runners up decided to combine their distances and so were able to score 163m. This would have been enough to win but the bottom 4 finally took the gold with a spectacular 234m!
Robert told us that, whilst he was dissapointed not to have been credited with the gold medal his conscience wouldn't allow him to "share" the medal with anyone else and he wouldn't be trying to combine his distance with anyone else as he felt he had proven himself anyway."Why should I share the gold when I should have got it to myself" he said begrudgingly.
Sebastian Coe welcomed the idea in principle but wasn't sure how it would be applied to the track events as adding slower times together would make things worse not better but he was open to suggestions. "I do see the benefits" he said, "the 100 metres is all over in under 10 seconds. To keep the interest going for days would add to the profile of the games and competitors alike"
Boris Johnson, London's Mayor, agreed, saying that he felt the Olymics were too elitist anyway and having relative unknowns pick up their share of the glory could only add to the appeal of the Olympics "Everyone's a winner" he said, "apart from the winners of course!"
