Who bet on the clock stopping?

It’s something that many punters may now have wished they had put a wager on and could be kicking themselves that they passed up such an opportunity – and we’re not talking about John Terry’s re-inauguration as England captain.

Tickets for the 2012 London Olympic Games went on sale today with much fanfare given to the fact that you have six weeks to get the tickets. Of course, the website crashed as they do when any more than about 50 people want to buy tickets for something, but there was a rather more embarrassing problem on the horizon for the city.

A huge countdown clock was unveiled in Trafalgar Square just yesterday to give visitors to the city an indication of how long it is until the games get underway next year. The only problem is that the clock stopped earlier this afternoon on 500 days and 7:06:56 meaning that conceivably the games would have to wait until it starts again.

That’s obviously on the premise that if THE clock stops then there’s no option but to postpone the games until it starts again, which is not true but it would be rather amusing if they actually stuck to it.

So far the games haven’t been hit with the usual problems that a big sporting event are dogged by in the UK and this will be a minor boob as far as the organizers are concerned. Although it still doesn’t reflect particularly well.

Punters should now be looking to their bookies to offer odds on all manner of different time related bets ahead of the games. If they can’t get the countdown clock to work does it also mean that the 100m sprint will actually be timed at nine minutes as opposed to seconds?

At least if they find participants turning up late they’ll now know why.