Letter: Much Wenlock and the Olympics. Discuss.

Letter: I note from the reports in the Shropshire Star that a new word has crept into the jargon of the Wenlock Olympic group - "fore-founder".

This is the word now applied by them to the undoubted local 19th century philanthropist, Dr William Penny Brookes, to describe his role in the creation of the Modern Olympics.

The new, diluted, description does nothing to disguise the reality of what the local groups are trying to achieve.

This is to create in the minds of people worldwide a belief that it was Brookes who created the Olympics and that Much Wenlock was its birthplace.

If proof were needed that the desire to promulgate this false story of Brookes's position in the history of the Olympics was not out of genuine idealistic motives, one only has to read the words of George Candler, Shropshire Council's assistant director of culture and leisure.

He said back in 2006 the county's Olympic group "looked at the way in which it could help businesses to secure lucrative contracts".

Councillor David Turner said that hoteliers and others were "already well-placed to cash in on commercial benefits".

The whole squalid affair is, of course, epitomised by the tawdry mascot, Wenlock, into the creation of which Lord Coe, that Titan of the Olympic track, and others through ignorance or otherwise, allowed themselves to be inveigled.

Hugh Haycocks

Telford