Missing Cameroonians Found; Coe Praises London Accessibility

Missing Cameroon Athletes Found

Five athletes from Cameroon's boxing team who disappeared during the Olympics have turned up at a small boxing gym in South London.

Christian Donfack Adjoufack, Thomas Essomba, Yhyacinthe Mewoli Abdon, Serge Ambomo, and Blaise Yepmou Menouo all failed to show for their plane home after being eliminated from the Games. It was thought they intended to apply for asylum in the U.K.

Under Olympic rules, the West Africans are allowed to stay in the country until November, when their accreditation runs out.

One of the assistant coaches at the gym, Jim Addis, said he and his fellow boxers were stunned when the Olympians came to their small club in New Cross. "They told me they wanted to stay here and were very keen to come back to the club," he added.

"We all want to help them as much as we can and understand they will be applying to stay here."

LOCOG said they had yet to have anything reported to them on the situation and that the Cameroonians were, of course, allowed to stay until November.

London "Exceeds Every Standard"

Sebastian Coe says London has "exceeded every standard" of past Paralympic and Olympic Games in providing accessibility in the Park and at venues.

Coe was speaking to reporters on Friday morning, now showing the signs of a man pleased with what he has done as his job as LOCOG chair ends in 10 days.

"I do genuinely think they have really moved along way from and exceeded every standard and gone way beyond it distinctly than at any previous Paralympic Games or even Olympic Games," he said. "You think about some of the mobility things we’ve got in place, some of the technology we’re now using, particularly in our venues."

"If you look at we’ve done with ‘ticketcare’, what we’ve done with ‘ticket companion’ as well, I really do think we’ve done a lot. This is the great thing about London; we always said we would raise the bar not just in Paralympic sport but the way we do everything.

"We’ve managed to move the agenda on well".

In "marking our own homework" as Coe put it, he said he was proud of what he and his team had done. Certainly, there were no stand-out issues that were put to either him or LOCOG director of communications Jackie Brock-Doyle on Friday morning, showing that so far the Paralympics are running smoothly.

With that in mind, Coe dismissed the notion that the Paralympics could be held at the same time as the Olympics in the summer – an issue that has been put forward before. "The IPC are very clear and I tend to agree with them that you do want it integrated, but you want it distinct. They are two very different [Games], both in the nature of the sport and in the spirit around them – the two are very different," he stressed.

"Frankly, it simply wouldn’t work. If you think about some of the modifications and the transitions we’ve had to make in our venues, particularly track and field, this would make it extremely difficult to do."

LOCOG Expecting More People

LOCOG confirmed that on the first day of Paralympic competition, the Games drew 122,000 spectators across all the venues.

In the Olympic Park, there were 72,000 spectators, including those that had non-event tickets. At ExCeL, around 18,000 turned up to see events in powerlifting, judo and sitting volleyball.

Brock-Doyle said that they were anticipating a big increase in traffic in the Park over the weekend as high profile events take place.

"We probably have another 70-80,000 tickets to sell and we are releasing them probably around 10,000 a day," she said."Over the next two days, the big days are coming up. This weekend, we’ll have big events in athletics and swimming, and we are expecting a big spike and increase in numbers in the Park."

Reported in London by Christian Radnedge

Homepage photo by Getty Images

20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.