The BOA has stressed the guidelines will in no way be enforced upon athletes and they will not be a set of rules or restrictions.

Instead, they will simply offer helpful advice to Olympic sports and their athletes on what the BOA deems effective and ineffective use of the social networking phenomenon.

Darryl Seibel, the BOA Head of Olympic Media and Communications Strategy, told insidethegames: "Social media outlets such as Twitter have undoubtedly become an extremely effective and efficient method of communication for many athletes.

"We are hugely supportive of athletes using Twitter, fully aware of how important it is and conscious of the positive effect it can have, particularly in terms of getting younger generations involved in the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement.

"We are fully behind that.

"The guidelines we will be issuing to the individual governing bodies are exactly that; guidelines.

"They will only provide guidance and give useful advice but athletes will in no way be restricted to say whatever it is that they want to say.

"It will also be up to individual sports themselves to set rules."

The guidelines will be issued to the 26 Olympic sports later this year and the BOA will undoubtedly be hoping the British athletes involved in London 2012 avoid being caught up in a multitude of negative Twitter-related stories similar to those that have appeared this year.

Last month, Liverpool star Ryan Babel (pictured) became the first player to be charged with improper conduct over a Twitter posting.

The 24-year-old Dutch winger criticised referee Howard Webb for his performance in Liverpool's FA Cup tie with Manchester United at Old Trafford.

He posted a picture of the referee mocked up in a Manchester United shirt after Webb awarded United a penalty in the first minute and later sent off Liverpool's captain Steven Gerrard.

The move saw all of Newcastle United's players being issued with guidelines about their tweeting habits while in rugby union, England rugby coach Martin Johnson has even stated that players risk their international careers with errant tweets.

The BOA has clearly not been so forthright with their guidelines and have already been supported in the move.

David Sparkes, the British Swimming chief executive, welcomed the move as he said: "We will be under immense scrutiny prior to the Games and some of our athletes are more media savvy than others.

"But the question is who will be the star?

"Before Beijing who was writing about Rebecca Adlington other than the Mansfield Echo?

"It is difficult to monitor every athlete so it is a good idea to have specific guidelines."

As yet, no other National Olympic Committee has formally stated they will be issuing Twitter guidelines while the BOA has made it clear their guidelines will be distributed only to the Olympic sports in Britain that they oversee.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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