London 2012: GB tennis team to miss opening ceremony

 Britain's Olympic tennis team have been told they are not permitted to attend the London 2012 opening ceremony.

The eight-strong squad, some of whom planned to take part, were informed of the decision by email on Friday.

A British Olympic Association spokesman told BBC Sport: "It is a choice made by each sport team leader together with the athletes.


"While the ceremonies are a significant occasion, performance comes first for Team GB's athletes."

Tennis team leader Paul Hutchins told the players in writing that none of them would be present at the event.

Anne Keothavong and Elena Baltacha play singles on Saturday, with Andy and Jamie Murray, Colin Fleming and Ross Hutchins, and Heather Watson and Laura Robson in doubles action.

Murray and Watson begin their singles campaigns on Sunday.

The opening ceremony starts at 21:00 BST and will finish after midnight.

Baltacha backed the decision: "We're here to compete. It would have been really nice to go but we're here for a reason and that has to come first. If we were to go we wouldn't be back until late and that's not the best preparation."

Athletes will be transported to a holding area where they can sit or stand while waiting to join a 90-minute parade inside the Olympic Stadium.

Eight tennis players are to carry their nation's flag: Max Mirnyi (Belarus), Marcos Baghdatis (Cyprus), Stephanie Vogt (Liechtenstein), Agnieszka Radwanska (Poland) Horia Tecau (Romania), Novak Djokovic (Serbia), Stanislas Wawrinka (Switzerland) and Maria Sharapova (Russia).

However, all of them play their opening matches on Sunday.

The BOA discussed the issue at length and agreed that athletes competing in the first 72 hours of the Games should prioritise performance.

A final decision is made by each sport following consultation between the team leader, coaches and athletes.

BOA chief executive Andy Hunt said that around half of the 541 athletes attending the ceremony would be a "reasonable" outcome.

None of the swimming or athletics squads will be there, while members of the eventing, sailing and road race cycling teams are also set to miss out.

Others, such as triathlete Alistair Brownlee, will be training in other parts of the country and overseas.

Day two: 21 States plunge into darkness as 3 grids collapse

An overstrained power generation and transmission structure spreading across 21 States of the North, East and North-East regions collapsed on Tuesday, plunging half of the country into darkness, trapping hundreds of miners in Jharkhand and West Bengal and paralysing the movement of inter-State trains. (The miners were later rescued.)

The second massive breakdown in as many days was caused by the continuing grid indiscipline on the part of the State Electricity Boards (SEBs) and power utilities that overdrew power from an already overstretched generation system. On Monday, the northern grid collapsed and it was restored after 15 hours. The Eastern and North-Eastern transmission lines too failed on Tuesday afternoon.

Although the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL) maintained that most areas would see power restored by 7.30 p.m., the situation is expected to become normal only after midnight. The Power Ministry and the PGCIL were unable to pinpoint the cause of the outage. States were overdrawing power was all that they had to say.

Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan refused to adhere to grid discipline and continued to overdraw power despite repeated warnings by the Northern Regional Load Despatch Centre (NRLDC) and other State centres, posing a serious danger to the safety of the grid. Even more shocking is the fact that most of these States have refused to install under frequency relays (UFRs) for automatic demand management schemes, which could have prevented such a massive failure. Similarly, the States were found to have overdrawn power when the grid frequency was below 49.5 Hz and even 48.8 Hz, in contravention of the orders of the regulatory authority and load despatch centres.

However, the Punjab government described the charge of overdrawing as absurd, factually baseless and grossly misleading.

Such was the scale of power failure that mining operations in Eastern India came to a grinding halt. Nearly 200 miners were trapped in the Eastern Coalfield at Burdwan in West Bengal and another 65 were trapped in the Bharat Coking Coal facility in Jharkhand.

The grid collapse took place around 1 p.m. affecting Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Orissa, Bihar, Rajasthan and Assam and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.

The railway network was the worst hit with trains across major parts of the country stopping midway.

This is possibly the first time that all three grids have collapsed simultaneously. Till late in the evening, around 25000 MW of the total 50,000 MW had been restored. About 13,000 MW has been restored in the Northern region and about 4,000 MW in the Eastern region. Supply to the affected regions is being extended from western and southern Grids.

By evening, the hydro stations in the northern region started working and supply has been restored up to Punjab and Haryana.