Olympics news

The International Olympic Committee admitted today that the Games were in “crisis” after anti-Chinese protests engulfed the global torch relay.

Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, said that he was “saddened” by the violence that broke out along the routes in London and Paris and was only avoided in San Francisco by a last-minute diversion that meant the flame was largely invisible.

Mr Rogge's comments came after it emerged that Gordon Brown would not be attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games on August 8 - although Downing Street denied any deliberate snub against the Chinese, who had expected him to do so.

Mr Brown will still attend the closing ceremony, when London is handed the Olympic flag by Beijing.

Pro-Tibet demonstrations have overshadowed the Olympic torch’s 85,000-mile journey around the world but the IOC pledged that the international tour would go on to a further 13 countries as planned. Its next stop is Buenos Aires.

“There is no scenario of either interrupting or bringing [it] back directly to Beijing,” Mr Rogge said on the opening day of the IOC’s executive board meeting in Beijing.

He expressed relief that the San Francisco leg had been spared much of the disruption seen in Europe but conceded that it had not been “the joyous party that we had wished it to be”.

Two of the San Francisco torchbearers used their moment in the spotlight to show their support for Tibetan independence, including the wheelchair runner Andrew Michael, who displayed a Fre Tibet patch tucked into his sleeve.

The other, Majora Carter, pulled out a small Tibetan flag - but was quickly bundled out of the convoy.

"The Chinese security and cops were on me like white on rice, it was no joke," said Ms Carter, 41, who runs a non-profit organisation in New York. "They pulled me out of the race, and then San Francisco police officers pushed me back into the crowd on the side of the street."

A decision about future torch relays, and whether to scrap the global tour introduced for Athens, will be made in September after the Beijing Games.