Not made in Britain: Official Olympic scarf is latest in long line of souvenirs made outside of UK

It would appear to be the perfect way to show patriotic support for our sportsmen and women – and also keep the sun off.

But the official Olympics scarf, unveiled yesterday, has become the latest in a long list of souvenirs for the London Games to be revealed as made outside of the UK.  

The initial run of 500,000 of the bandana-style cotton sheets will be produced at a Next factory in India, with subsequent orders made in either Portugal or Turkey.

Unpatriotic: The official Olympic scarf for London 2012 (above) will be made in a Next factory in India

It comes just days after the Daily Mail revealed just 9 per cent of the 2012 memento collection is made here.

The scarf will be available in Next stores in May, costing £5 for a 20in one or £10 for a 35in version.

All proceeds will go to the British Olympic Association and British Paralympic Association and it is hoped it will raise up to £10million for the athletes.

The cotton voile scarves feature the Team GB logo or the British Paralympic Association logo on a background of more than 2,000 black ‘hieroglyphs’ – symbols representing the Olympic sports and London.

Flying the flag: Five-time Olympic gold medal rower Sir Steve Redgrave, Olympic silver medalist Sharron Davies and para-equestrian Lee Pearson unveil the two designs of scarves at the Saatchi Gallery in London yesterday

The symbols include 900 figures to represent the 900 Team GB and Paralympics GB athletes, 900 hearts ‘to express the nation’s special love’, 900 stars ‘to recognise that every one of our athletes is a true star’ and 60 hands to symbolise 60million GB supporters.

English roses, Welsh daffodils, Northern Irish flax and Scottish thistles also feature on the heavily-patterned scarf as well as national landmarks and the date of the opening ceremony.

The scarf has been described as ‘an iconic memento of the London 2012 Games’ and the BOA has agreed for Olympic sponsor Next to manufacture an initial run of 500,000 scarves.

Adidas, another sponsor, will have its logo on the scarves and help sell them through its outlets.

The scarves are one of two pieces of Olympic merchandise which the BOA are allowed to keep net profits from, following an agreement with the London 2012 organising committee.

Rich tapestry: The cotton voile scarves feature the Team GB logo or the British Paralympic Association logo on a background of more than 2,000 black ‘hieroglyphs’ – symbols representing the Olympic sports and London

The second item, a ‘collectable’ produced in partnership with BP, will be launched at the end of May.

The association has spent more than two years working on the design for the scarves, which come with a letter from five-time gold medallist Sir Steve Redgrave, encouraging people to ‘wear it, wave it and help Team GB WIN with it!’

The BOA hopes to sell at least one million of the scarves, which some have described as looking like tea towels, in an attempt to mirror the success of the 2010 Vancouver winter Olympics – where 4.3m pairs of red mittens were sold, raising millions for the organising committee.

BOA chief executive Andy Hunt said the scarves were vital for building support for the games.

He said: ‘We would love it to be a massive success. Here is an item you can take to show you have gone out and supported the team.’

The scarves will be available online WHEN and in Next stores from May – but may not be on sale in any of the official London 2012 merchandise stores in Olympic venues, due to a row between the BOA and Locog, which controls the shops.

The BOA will have to share profits from any sales in initial shops with Locog, which needs merchandise income to meet the £2.2bn running costs of the Games.

The BOA also announced that it will be opening a museum close to the main stadium and aquatic centre in the Olympic Park after the Games. The £10m project will celebrate London’s status as the only city to have hosted the Olympics three times, and could include memorabilia from every member of Team GB at this summer’s event.

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Posted in: British Olympic Association,British Paralympic Association,London Olympics 2012,London Olympics Sports

London 2012 Olympics: cash-strapped British Olympic Association pulls out of hosting pre-Games gathering

The general assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), which is attended by officials from more than 200 countries and is one of the most important meetings on the Olympic calendar, was due to be hosted by the BOA in the capital in April 2012.

In recent years, whenever the biennial assembly has been held in the year of a summer Olympics it assembles in the Olympic host city three months before the Games, running alongside a meeting of the International Olympic Committee’s executive board. It was hosted by Beijing in 2008 and Athens in 2004.

Next year’s assembly had been earmarked for London but the BOA has confirmed that it has no choice but to back out of the event unless other ways can be found to meet the estimated £5 million cost.

Earlier this month, the BOA admitted it was facing such a serious cash crisis that it was struggling even to fulfil its core task of supporting the British team in 2012, in the run-up to the Olympics at its preparation camp, and during the Games.

The money saved from the ANOC meeting should help protect Team GB athletes from any funding shortfall. A BOA spokesman said: “It’s a function of prioritisation. It’s not lack of resources necessarily. We’ve got the resources. It’s just a matter of where you direct them and, given where we are, it’s our determination that those resources need to be directed to our core mission, which is delivery of the team and all the logistics and high-performance services around the team.

“Would we like to host ANOC? Absolutely we would. But given limited resources, we have to make prioritisations.”

The BOA has yet to withdraw formally from hosting the event but has informed ANOC of its difficulty in meeting its financial obligations. It will now be up to ANOC to decide whether to move the event elsewhere or to find alternative funding solutions to allow the assembly to go ahead in London.

It is understood that part of the problem is that the BOA has been left to pick up the entire £5 million bill for the assembly, unlike in Beijing and Athens where the Olympic organising committees contributed to the cost.

The decision to back out will be a further blow to the international reputation of the BOA, following its decision to mount a legal challenge at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to the way Locog calculates any cash surplus from the Games.

The BOA, which is entitled to 20 per cent of any profit, argues that the surplus should apply just to the Olympic budget, whereas Locog believes the cost of the Paralympics should be included in the calculation. The IOC has backed Locog’s stance after the BOA rejected an offer by IOC president, Jacques Rogge, to try to broker an amicable solution to the dispute.

Xavier Gonzalez, chief executive of the International Paralympic Committee, insisted on Friday that the Paralympics would cover its own costs and accused the BOA of undermining London’s vision of an integrated Olympic and Paralympic Games.

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Posted in: ANOC,British Olympic Association,London 2012 Olympic,London Olympic 2012,London Olympics,National Olympic Committees