Sport: Olympic organisers cry foul

Remarkable as it may seem in the ever expanding world of international sport, the egg and spoon race is not yet an Olympic sport, although to one woman, at least, the Sydney Olympic 2000 logo would lend itself ideally to promotion of that favourite of primary school sports days.

Pam Clarke, however, has quite another motive for putting a different slant on the symbol and the Sydney Games organisers have cried foul, suing her for unauthorised use of the Olympic logo.

She is an animal rights activist, who has adapted the design for use on T-shirts bearing the slogan "Freedom 2000" to publicise her campaign against the treatment of battery hens, birds kept in rows of cages for the mass production of eggs.

Clarke defended the altered artwork, saying the logo, which depicts a stylised runner trailing a streamer, looked like a "sad hen" when viewed from right to left. "Once you see the bird, you can't go back to the runner," Clarke said. "It's a gift. I didn't have to make any changes."

The Tasmanian has, in fact, turned the Olympic rings into eggs for her T-shirts, and has made more than pounds 200 profit for her campaign by selling a few hundred of them.