If it wasn't so serious it would be funny, but SOCOG has outdone its stuff-ups . . . for which it ought to be awarded a gold medal.

The Sydney Olympics medal machine has got itself in an unbelievable twist.

While looking good on the surface, the 27^th Olympaid medals are about as graphically wrong as they can get.

Have the "experts" at SOCOG got it all wrong? Have they confused Rome with Athens?

The medals, and there are hundreds of boxes of them costing a fortune to cast, clearly show a section of the Colosseum, a place where Gladiators fought a life-and-death battle against lions.

This tends to show a serious fundamental lack of historical knowledge about the birthplace of the host country of the Games.

Tall white pillars are the stuff of architecture in Athens, not the arches of the Colosseum. The medals ought to show the shape of a classical Greek amphitheatre.