London's Warm-Up Weekend runs not so smoothly

THE last few days have left me saturated with sport. It was all, essentially, on my doorstep as London played host to the Warm-Up Weekend - a mini Olympics and snapshot of London 2012.

TRIPLE-PRONGED: (l-r) Modern pentathlete Frejya Prentice, basketball ace Mike Lenly and triathlete Alsitair Brownlee were all in action in London over the weekend

But it did not exactly leave me crooning ‘Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner' from the rooftops.

This weekend was a crucial test for the capital with three high-profile events in Olympic sports taking place in the capital - modern pentathlon at Crystal Palace, the London leg of the ITU World Championship Series in Hyde Park and the Game On basketball tournament at the O2.

I took in all three, and the result? There is work to be done.

My initial question going into the Modern Pentathlon World Championships - how do you find out you're good at modern pentathlon, and how do you know who's the best with the new controversial run/shoot format turning the final event of this age-old Olympic sport into little more than a lottery?

But, as it turns out, it wasn't the combined event - an attempt by UIPM to force the sport into the 21st century - which marred Sunday's women's final, it was the show jumping - very much an original component of Pierre de Coubertin's quest to find "the ideal, complete athlete."

Going into the show jumping round, home-hope Katy Livingston - who won world championship bronze last year - had gold within her grasp, sitting at the top of the leader board with an 88 point advantage.

What followed was chaos - a calamity on the organisers' part, dashing the hopes of Britain's leading hope.

Officials sounded a buzzer, indicating Livingston and her 11-year-old mare Cathleen should stop - and that they did.

The reason? A fence had not been fixed from the previous round, but with officials on the scene within seconds, the buzzer soon resounded. Back to it, Livingston.

But her concentration was shot to pieces - she had lost confidence in the horse and, crucially, the horse had lost all faith in her. She continued to suffer both a refusal and a fall at the penultimate fence, scoring just 932 points.

GOING OVER: Katy Livingston takes a tumble at Crystal Palace (Getty Images)

Livingston started the combined event in fifth, but her day was over and she fell to a lowly 23rd place - her dream of being crowned world champion on home soil shattered.

She'll just be hoping she does not suffer the same luck in three years time when the Olympic Games come to town.

Livingston may be left ruing her missed opportunity, but fence-gate was not the only technical mishap at Crystal Palace.

During the women's semi-final, the touch pads in the newly refurbished swimming pool at the National Sports Centre did not work.

Cue officials standing over each lane, stopwatch in hand. Meanwhile, on the range, the lights above Olympic champion Lena Schoneborn's shooting target malfunctioned. The stopwatch was back out, with officials timing how long it was before Schoneborn could continue - 65 seconds were deducted from her finish time and she qualified for the final in first place.

The weekend may have been branded as a warm-up to 2012 - but that is a poor show for a world championships. The first world championships of an Olympic sport to be held in London since 1986.

But also poor was the turn-out at Crystal Palace. Spectators for the women's final - a discipline where Great Britain have performed admirably at the Olympics since its inception in 2000 - were in their hundreds.

It doesn't help that it was held at Crystal Palace - a part of south London dropped of the tube map - while the triathlon in tourist-friendly Hyde Park attracted crowds four or five deep. 

The move to the combined event was to try and shake-up the image of modern pentathlon - but it is a sport stuck firmly in the past with de Coubertin and his early 20th century ideals.  

The competition has already been compacted from five days to one - but UIPM president Klaus Schormann must be looking over his shoulder with the IOC hot on his heels.

Jacques Rogge and co signalled their future intentions for the Olympic movement with the vote of confidence to rugby sevens - quick, short, sharp action. Modern pentathlon can only be described as the opposite. 

But while modern pentathlon was agonisingly slow, Ruedi Wild and Bruno Pais were too eager in the triathlon.

As they came into the bike/run transition, they just didn't stop and continued for an extra 8km lap.

But it came, in part, from another error from an official, who failed to wave the red flag, which indicates it is time for the transition.

The official was left red-faced but, in truth, it is the overall responsibility of the athletes to count their laps.

But while the pace was lightening fast in Hyde Park, the long-standing issue of public transport reared its ugly head yet again. 

Having been tasked with taking in both the triathlon and basketball on Saturday, I set about making my way from Hyde Park Corner to the O2 in North Greenwich - a simple enough journey.

The result? Jubilee line, closed. Victoria line, closed. The alternative route took in the two tube lines, the DLR and a ferry across the Thames. And 15 minutes of the basketball missed.

It's fair to say that Boris Johnson and co won't close the tube for engineering works during the Games - but infrastructure, capacity and the threat of strike action is an ever-present problem.

Of course, it is easy to be too critical of the weekend.

These events are vital in ironing out the mistakes now, rather than in 2012 - but the Olympic Games come on a much grander scale than a decidedly lukewarm weekend.