Despite three years of careful planning, the preparations of some of the Great Britain teams for the Beijing Olympic Games this summer are at risk of being scrapped by their Chinese hosts. The situation has reached a point where letters were sent from the British Olympic Association (BOA) to certain member sports, notably rowing and canoeing, informing them that even though they had planned to accommodate their athletes outside the Beijing Olympic village and near their competition venue, the Chinese had decided otherwise.

The Britain team had rented accommodation in the Shunyi district, where the rowing and canoeing will be held, to avoid having to commute daily out of town to their competition venues and because they believed that this would give them a competitive advantage. After a flood of medals in international competition last week, rowing and canoeing represent strong medal chances for the Britain team this summer.

This is not the first time that the Chinese have forced the Britain team to change their plans. Other nations, notably the United States, Italy and Sweden, have had similar experiences. When Britain’s sailors were in China in March last year, they had weather-monitoring equipment confiscated.

It is unclear why, so close to the Games, the goalposts are being moved, be it for security reasons, a desire to charge extra for added security forces or simply a will to keep a controlling hand on all the foreign nationals at the Games. The organising committee in Beijing claims to be an innocent party.

But this is not standard practice. Denis Oswald, the president of the International Rowing Federation, said: “I doubt they could force anyone to stay in the Olympic village. This has never been the case in the past.”

Simon Clegg, the BOA chief executive, said yesterday that he had not been informed why and under what jurisdiction these changes may be being made. Clegg is in Beijing with a BOA delegation and rescuing this situation is one of their priorities.

The Britain teams concerned are unamused. “It’s not only that we planned to be out of the village, but we rehearsed it at the test event last August,” John Anderson, the performance director of GB Canoeing, said. “You try and create an environment where going into the Olympics is as much as possible like going home. That’s good preparation.”

David Tanner, the performance director for GB Rowing, said: “We consider our booked accommodation to be an advantage to us competitively. I’ve even paid the BOA the money I needed to to stay outside the village.”

The removal of athletes from the rowing and canoeing venue, 36 kilometres away from the Olympic Village, is set against a backdrop of increased paranoia among the Chinese authorities about the movement of foreigners during the Games. This month tighter restrictions have been introduced across Beijing, with visitors from out of town facing random searches, and there are reports of fewer visas being issued to business travellers. Cafés and bars around the Olympic Park are to be closed from July to minimise possible disorder during the Games.

The justification in most cases is security: the threat of disruption by terrorists and the premise that China cannot guarantee the safety of visitors if they decide to venture off “Olympic soil”. Sources say that the US team, who had agreed contracts long ago to use Beijing’s Normal University for their pre-Games preparation camp, were informed that unless they paid $2 million (about £1 million), the contract would no longer stand.

As at previous Games, organisers have told teams and sponsors that they are responsible for their own safety outside official venues. The organising committee is advising teams to contract their own security personnel to protect dignitaries, staff and athletes if they want to venture off Olympic territory. However, the committee’s security experts - drafted in from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, which is an arm of the Government - want teams to use only contractors approved by it. The cost of this is said to be “more than a little exorbitant”.

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