On The Line - Becky and Co still snub Team 2012

Updated: 15:57 EST, 4 July 2009

Golden girl Becky Adlington is among the big-name athletes whose agents continue to resist making a commitment to the Team 2012 fundraising programme.

Swimming, athletics and cycling - three of the biggest Olympic sports - are yet to return collective contracts, despite assurances from their leading officials that they back the project.

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Golden girl: Rebecca Adlington

A UK Sport spokesman said there was confidence everyone would sign up, but some agents, including Adlington's representative, Rob Woodhouse, still have reservations about signing away clients' image and commercial rights to help plug the £50million shortfall in funding for other Olympic and Paralympic sports.

Some would argue that champions like Adlington should be happy to put something back after receiving central funding en route to success.

But some agents insist that their clients are being asked to sacrifice more than Team 2012 chiefs suggest and that it is unfair to ask athletes with short careers, who are not earning fortunes, to forego potential earnings in order to help fill a hole left by broken government promises.

Showing better timing than Andrew 'What Bus?' Flintoff (left), former FA executive David Davies and his TV-listed event panel will hear submissions from Channel 4 on Tuesday, a day before the start of the first Ashes Test.

The urn-winning exploits of Flintoff and England in 2005 were shown on Channel 4 but when the ECB sold live home rights to Sky, demand increased for a review of which events should be freely available.

Costly thank-you

WHAT with a �1.5million loss for 2008, an emergency cash advance from London 2012 organisers and redundancies, you would think the British Olympic Association needed to watch every penny. You would think wrong, however. In a marquee at Wimbledon on Tuesday, chairman Colin Moynihan, chief executive Andy Hunt, commercial director Hugh Chambers and a number of Olympians hosted a thank-you lunch for Beijing sponsors. Hopefully, the same backers will make future donations to cover at least the four-figure cost of the event.

As the Portsmouth takeover saga limps on, there is a further blow to the credibility of front man Sulaiman Al-Fahim (left).

When it was revealed he was not entitled to use the title 'Dr', Al-Fahim's spokesman said people had started using that form of address in error and the mistake would be corrected.

In which case, he had better have a word with the people who print his business cards, which as recently as May bore the name 'Dr Sulaiman Al-Fahim'.

AND FINALLY...

His Godolphin stable is having a hard time, a horse he rode in an endurance race tested positive for banned substances and his Dubai kingdom is suffering in the recession - no wonder Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum feels in need of a few friends.

Like Barack Obama, he now has a page on Facebook, where he says he's 'passionate about sports, particularly endurance racing.'

Football clubs needing a slightly-less-rich-than-before sugar-daddy could always poke him.