Olympic Newsdesk - FA Rules Out Rio 2016; Norway Hosts Next Collectors Fair

FA Rules Out Rio 2016

Don’t expect British men to take the pitch at Rio 2016, says Football Association general secretary Alex Horne.

After the FA and British Olympic Association agreed to field a men’s team at the Games for the first time in 52 years, concerns for the footballing independence of the four home nations will apparently render London 2012 a one-off affair.

"The pinnacle is the World [Cup], and we've got the European Championships as well," Horne told Sky Sports News on Tuesday.

"We play as England and we are proud to play as England and I know Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are proud to play as their own individual entities and we wouldn't want to do anything to risk that.

"FIFA accepted the position when we were hosting [the Olympics] and I think we take that and we move on."

Whether the FA will keep British women home from Rio as well remains up in the air.

"We are not ruling it out completely," Horne said in separate comments to BBC Radio 5 alive.

"We went through a lot of politics to get here," he added in reference to London, where the FA was fielding a women’s Olympic side for the first time ever.

Norway Hosts Next Collectors Fair

Bo, Norway, will host the 19th World Olympic Collectors Fair in 2013.

The show starts July 28 and wraps up July 28, according to information distributed at the recent Olympin Collectors Club Memorabilia Festival in Atlanta.

"Next year we celebrate 20 years of international Olympic summer fairs in Bo," veteran collector Halvor Kleppen of Norway says on the flyer.

"The number of visitors has been between 2,500 and 4,000, but with the publicity we will get next year like nationwide radio and TV, we hope to set a new record.

"But, as we all know, the most important part for us is the group of international collectors attending, and we hope to beat the 2003 record of 115 tables for collectors," adds Kleppen, a member of the IOC’s Olympic philately, numismatic and memorabilia commission.

All exhibitors from the Olympin show in Atlanta will receive a free table in Bo, where indoor soccer venue Telemarkqshallen will host.

The World Olympic Collectors Fair, which is sanctioned by the IOC, is the world’s largest Olympic memorabilia show. Past hosts include Cologne, Warsaw, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Beijing, Lausanne, Chicago and, most recently, Athens.

Tourism Slump from Olympics?

Early numbers indicate the Olympics hurt – not helped – London’s landmark attractions over the summer.

According to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, some sites suffered 60 percent fewer visitors during the Games than the same period last year.

Outdoor attractions such as Kew Gardens and London Zoo saw the largest drops during what proved to be the wettest summer in a century.

"The summer of 2012 has been a difficult time financially for our most popular and best-loved visitor attractions," ALVA CEO Bernard Donoghue told the BBC on Tuesday.

"For gardens and outdoor attractions across the UK, the appalling weather during much of the year has led to one of the worst trading periods since 2001 – the year of a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak."

The entire ALVA report is due to be published next year.

Reported byMatthew Grayson

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