Russian gold in Predictable Trial Outcome

The final event of the Olympics was won by Russia, five days after the official end of the games.

Faced with a stiff challenge from neighbours Ukraine - who jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoschenko on trumped-up corruption charges - and new Asian challengers Bahrain, for locking up human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, former Predictable Trial Outcomes champion Russia needed a big play to regain their crown.

They found such a play in the Pussy Riot trial, one universally slated as irregular and unfair, on charges of holliganism motivated by religious hatred. The PTO judges scored it highly on the spurious nature of the charges, the lack of time for a defence to be mounted and the concealment of the real reasons to punish the three defendants. All of these contributed to a highly predictable outcome, coming with a high degree of difficulty.

Ukraine took silver with the highly predictable Tymoschenko outcome with Bahrain taking bronze. Both entries scored highly, but fell down on the difficulty aspect with judges saying "there's predictable and then there's bleedin' obvious. Bahrain just weren't trying hard enough to be convoluted. I mean, human rights activist in a Middle Eastern kingdom ruled by an autocratic family? Yaawwwnn".

Russia expect to defend their title strongly in four years time, but are openly wary of some strong contenders coming through. "It's the Saudis we fear most", said the Russian chef de mission, "who will probably lock a woman up for having one toenail slightly longer than the decency police determine it should be. We're very happy to have won this gold, but realise competition is only getting stronger all around the world".

Opening up to democracy "seriously harms" Burma's F1 bid

Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone told a meeting of motorsport's governing body, the FIA, that Burma's recent elections and slow steps towards democracy "seriously harms" Rangoon's bid to host a round of the world championship.

With Bahrain getting the go-ahead after a glowing report from disgraced former Metropolitan Police chief John Yates of the Yard, it was thought that any regime that didn't clamp down on opposition politicians and a free press and indulge in kidnap, arbitrary arrest, torture, tear-gassing of protests and extra-judicial killings would not be a welcome stop-off for the F1 circus.

"Bahrain exemplifies everything we wish to reflect in the sport", a spokesman for Ecclestone told us after the meeting, "and anyone wishing to be a part of the sport has to adhere to those ideals. Frankly, Burma are going exactly the wrong way about it. There are reasons that we're in China, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Malaysia and Bahrain and reasons why we're going to Russia in 2014".

Existing hosts of races are also under pressure to apply similar principles with Britain jailing people for posting messages on Twitter and Facebook and the USA maintaining it's record of executing it's citizens, but others are under pressure to do likewise. "Frankly", said the spokesman, "if Belgium don't start locking people up for no reason, then we'll drop them for Saudi Arabia or Swaziland as soon as look at them".