Team buses get lost from Heathrow to Olympic Park

Team buses get lost from Heathrow to Olympic Park

Team buses get lost from Heathrow to Olympic Park - An embarrassing shortage of security guards, fears over airport queues and questions about the capital's creaking transport system have overshadowed preparations for the Games.


And two stories from American and Australian athletes did little to dispel the sense of farce.

US 400m hurdler Kerron Clement, twice a world champion, claimed he spent four hours on a bus after the driver got lost on the way to the London 2012 Olympic Village.

Games organisers are expecting a busy day with hundreds of athletes checking in, but it has not all been smooth running according to Clement - who takes on Dai Greene, Great Britain's current world champion, in the one-lap hurdles next month.

"Um, so we've been lost on the road for 4hrs. Not a good first impression London," he tweeted.

"Athletes are sleepy, hungry and need to pee. Could we get to the Olympic Village please?"

The American track and field squad will spend the next three weeks at their training base in Birmingham but needed to travel to the Olympic Park to pick-up their all-important accreditation.

A bus of 30 Australian officials and medics, meanwhile, took the scenic route through London when their bus driver forgot the route and admitted not knowing how to work the on-board GPS system.

"It would have been a great tourist trip if that is what you are here for," said Australian official Damian Kelly.

"He admitted this was the first time he had taken the route and no one had taught him how the navigation system works because it operates off GPS.

"One of the doctors on board got it working for him, but then the Olympic Village hadn't been loaded into the system and everyone was trying to find the name of the street that the village was in. In the end another physio got out his iPhone and gave directors to the bus driver via his phone."

Extra soldiers were drafted in to help police the Games after private security firm G4S said it had run out of time to train all its newly recruited staff. The company's share price fell sharply on Monday.

Less than two weeks before the opening ceremony on July 27, Prime Minister David Cameron said the G4S shambles would not compromise Britain's largest peacetime policing exercise.

"We had contingency plans, we are using those contingency plans and we will do whatever it takes to deliver a safe and secure Games," Cameron said.

The security fiasco dominated the headlines over the weekend and raised fears that Britain would struggle to cope with the Games.

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