Top-selling British paper prays to ancient gods for medals

LONDON (AFP) - With four days of Olympic competition over and only two medals won, Britain's top-selling daily paper resorted to desperate measures to push the nation's athletes to greater success -- a prayer to the ancient Greek gods.

The Sun tabloid devoted an entire page to a specially-composed appeal to Zeus, the most senior deity in the ancient Greek pantheon.

"Oh, king of the Greek gods, conqueror of the Titans, ruler of Mount Olympus ... erm ... sorry to bother you, but we need a huge favour," the tongue in cheek prayer begins, requesting at least one gold medal.

"It doesn't matter where it comes from, we don't care -- it can be canoeing, diving, boxing, weightlifting, swimming, showjumping, athletics or even synchronised swimming," it continues.

If Britain's athletes couldn't be granted extra powers, "we wondered if it might not be too later to discover that your son Hercules -- the greatest champion of them all -- has a British grandma. Just a thought."

Thus far at the Athens Games, Britain has won only a silver medal from synchronised diving duo Peter Waterfield and Leon Taylor and a surprise bronze for 200m butterfly swimmer Stephen Parry.

Before the Olympics, the British team's chef de mission Simon Clegg said he hoped the team could save a sorry national summer of sport which saw Tim Henman lose again at Wimbledon and England's football and rugby union sides both suffer reverses.