The Olympic torch relay before the 2012 Olympics in London will be restricted to Britain after protests marred the worldwide relay ahead of the Beijing Games, a report said Sunday. Tessa Jowell, the British minister with responsibility for the Olympics, told The Sunday Times newspaper she had "a lot of enthusiasm" for the idea of the torch being taken round the "villages, towns and cities in the UK". "There would be no more powerful way of making them feel part of the Olympics, would there?" Jowell said in an interview. The weekly said that Jowell would announce that the relay would take place only in Britain, although it did not quote the minister as saying this. China's decision to take the torch around the world turned into a global protest by pro-Tibet campaigners, who tried to wrestle the torch from the hands of runners on stages in Europe. The Beijing torch was surrounded by tracksuit-wearing security minders on its troubled passage around the globe. Left with a tall order to rival the spectacular Beijing Olympics, the London organizers have promised a more modest Games. Jowell said the 2012 planners had noticed that some venues in Beijing had sparse crowds. "My ambition is to see seats filled, every Londoner having the opportunity to see some event, and people being able to come from around the country. It's not simple, but we are determined to crack this," she told the newspaper. New concept for ceremonies The opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 Olympic Games should involve all of London, not just the main stadium in Stratford in the east of the capital, Jowell had said on Saturday. Olympic Games are traditionally opened and closed at a single venue as happened earlier this month in Beijing, where China won plaudits for its extravagant ceremonies in the futuristic Bird's Nest stadium. “We don't want to try to emulate Beijing,” Jowell said. “What we want is new ways of thinking about the opening ceremony. “We want the whole of London to be involved, with different parts of London taking part in the ceremony. The London Games must be deeply democratic, with the city's citizens feeling they're intimately involved.” Jowell is also assessing a ticketing system similar to the one used by the organizers of the Wimbledon tennis Grand Slam, where unused tickets are re-issued to minimise the number of empty seats.
