New Zealand hockey manager Kevin Marr was ordered by International Olympic Committee officials to watch the must-win match against Germany from the grandstand as punishment for three players wearing black undies beneath white shorts in an earlier game. Under the Olympic field hockey rules, shorts and undies must be the same colour.

International Olympics Committee president Jacques Rogge said he expected some form of protest by athletes given the contentious nature of China’s human rights record and policies. The IOC was “not worried”, Dr Rogge said, because he felt confident “athletes will have common sense”.

The International Olympics Committee was maintaining yesterday that no secret deal had been done to allow China to maintain its censorship of the internet and to continue to spy on emails. But its shift in forcing China into last-minute concessions told a different story.

The loosening of restrictions, however limited, came after senior International Olympic Committee officials on Thursday spoke with Olympic organizers and urged them to reconsider their decision to maintain a ban on politically sensitive sites, which critics said violated previous pledges China had made to provide uncensored Internet access to reporters.

We now know that when China’s top-level delegation bid for Beijing to host the 2008 Games seven years ago, promising a new China, they lied. As I write this, more than 150 websites are being blocked - including BBC China and German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle - journalists are being harassed, and areas such as Tiananmen Square are being tightly restricted.

The double whammy of increased internet censorship coupled with the news that the Public Security Bureau had installed spying software in international hotels flies in the face of promises for complete media freedom made by the Chinese authorities when they won the right to host the Olympic Games in 2001.