London 2012: Last day of Olympic Games

The 2012 Olympic Games has entered its final day, with the closing ceremony to take place before London hands over to 2016 host city Rio de Janeiro. Fifteen gold medals will be available on Sunday in events including boxing, the men's marathon and basketball. Team GB has won 62 medals, including 28 golds - the latest on Saturday from runner Mo Farah, boxer Luke Campbell and canoeist Ed McKeever. 

The PM said funding for Olympic sports will be maintained at £125m a year. David Cameron said the funding will continue through until the Games in Rio - it had previously only been guaranteed until the end of 2014.

After 16 days of competition at the Olympic Park, plus venues throughout London and other cities, the closing ceremony will begin at 21:00 BST. Once the set has been moved into place on Sunday, between 200 and 1,000 seats for the ceremony will be released for sale online.

Involving 3,500 performers in the Olympic Stadium, artistic director Kim Gavin said the ceremony would be "the best after-show party of all time". During the ceremony, sailor Ben Ainslie, a four-time Olympic gold medallist, will carry the flag for Team GB.

Team GB chef de mission Andy Hunt said: "In becoming the most decorated sailor in Olympic history, Ben has earned the honour of leading our delegation into the closing ceremony of these extraordinary Games."

Mr Gavin said the ceremony, which will focus on 50 years of British music, would be a "mashed-up symphony". Called the Symphony of British Music, the event will showcase "British creativity in the arts" and take people on a musical journey from Elgar to Waterloo Sunset in 30 tracks, Mr Gavin said. Singer George Michael has already confirmed his participation and the Spice Girls and Tinie Tempah are among acts reported to be performing.

The London organising committee, Locog, said the total cost of the four Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies stood at £81m, with the opening ceremony costing £27m. Mr Cameron, announcing the sport funding extension, said: "The motto of these Games has been 'inspire a generation'. Nothing has been more inspirational than seeing our elite athletes win gold this summer. There's a direct link between elite success and participation in sport.

"I want one of the legacies of these Games to be our athletes triumphing in Rio in 2016, and in future Olympic Games. Guaranteeing this funding will help ensure that happens." The funding, which will also support Paralympic athletes, will come from lottery and government money.

Team GB enters the final day of competition in third place in the medal table. They have surpassed the medal achievements of Beijing four years ago, and recorded the biggest haul since the London Olympics of 1908. Team GB is guaranteed more medals on Sunday as welterweight Freddie Evans and super-heavyweight Anthony Joshua will contest boxing finals in the afternoon.

World champion Mhairi Spence and world bronze medallist Samantha Murray go for Britain in the women's modern pentathlon, the last gold medal on offer at the Games. There is also British interest in the men's marathon and men's cross-country mountain biking. Elsewhere, USA takes on Spain in the final of the men's basketball at North Greenwich Arena.

And in a swimming pool just 12 miles away from the Aquatics Centre where Olympic golds were won and lost over the past fortnight, former five-time Olympic champion - Ian Thorpe is doing his own bit to boost the event's legacy. He has offered Games enthusiasts free swimming tips at Tooting Bec Lido from 0900 BST.

The revamped 560-acre (227-hectare) Olympic Park site - to be known as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park - is set to reopen in stages starting on the first anniversary of the opening of the Games, on 27 July 2013.

More Olympic tickets put on sale

More Olympic tickets will go on sale after the row over empty seats, organisers Locog have said. It said an initial 3,000 tickets - including 600 gymnastics tickets - were "put back into the pot" and sold on the London 2012 website on Sunday night. More tickets returned by sports federations would be released the night before events, Locog added. Transport chiefs say London's morning rush hour went well on the first full working-day of the Games. 

Prime Minister David Cameron, meanwhile, said the empty seats were "disappointing" but not "a unique episode" with other previous Games facing similar problems. At some venues, seats in the accredited "Olympic family" areas - reserved for groups including officials, sports federations, athletes, journalists and sponsors - have remained empty.

Locog communications director Jackie Brock-Doyle said organisers were doing everything they could to fix the problem. "We're doing this session by session, talking to the accredited groups - including obviously broadcast media and everybody else - and asking whether we can release, for the different sessions, tickets back into the public pot," she said. And she said accredited seating for London 2012 was down 15% on previous Games.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "Often these are very nice seats in very high-profile positions - and so what we're saying to the IOC and the International Sports Federations is if you're not going to use them, could we have as many as possible back, because, of course, we've got lots of members of the public who would dearly love to go."

He said contractually the seats belonged to the sporting bodies, so it was a process of negotiation to get them released. He said organisers were looking at whether it was feasible to impose a 30-minute rule whereby empty seats were re-allocated if ticketholders had not sat down within 30 minutes of an event starting. 

However, the ticket releases were causing some confusion at the Olympic Park as members of the public were arriving and expecting to be able to buy them. The latest release of tickets can be bought only online, before they are picked up at collection points in venues for pre-purchased tickets.

In other Olympic developments:

Team GB's Katherine Grainger and Anna Watkins clocked an Olympic record time of 6mins 44.33secs in the women's double sculls rowing as they powered into the final

Weightlifter Zoe Smith, 18 years old and at her first Olympics, set a new British clean and jerk record and new personal best total

The Olympic cauldron was extinguished overnight - although the Olympic flame was kept alight in a miner's lantern - while it was moved from the field of play to the south end of the Olympic Stadium

Ten people have been charged with ticket touting offences since the start of the Games, and a further 19 have been arrested, Scotland Yard said

Transport for London's Games transport director Mark Evers said the network had worked well on Monday morning. London Bridge station is expected to be particularly busy later with thousands of spectators heading to the Olympic Park and equestrian events in Greenwich.

However, London Mayor Boris Johnson said some of the Games lanes had been "turned off", allowing the public to use them, because so many Olympic officials were opting for public transport. He said IOC president Jacques Rogge had travelled by Docklands Light Rail instead of car. Olympic organisers expect 1 million extra visitors to London to make some 3 million journeys on public transport - on top of the usual 12m daily public transport journeys.

In competition, Team GB divers Tom Daley and Pete Waterfield came fourth in the men's synchronised 10m platform final. And Britain's men, who have made history after qualifying in third place for the gymnastics team final - ahead of Olympic and world champions China - will compete at 16:25 BST.

Some Important Facts

It has not been such a manic Monday so far.

London workers seem to have heeded warnings that extra restrictions and Games Lanes, combined with spectator congestion might result in nightmare commutes, and have changed their patterns.

Roads seem no more jammed than normal, train and tube lines are running well.

Even at London Bridge, where passengers have their own Olympic time trial today - diverted away from the usual routes in case of overcrowding - there were no complaints.

But this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Six platforms at London Bridge will be exit only this evening as 50,000 equestrian spectators all head home from Greenwich Park during the evening peak.

And the crunch transport test comes on Friday - the first full day of athletics in Stratford's 80,000-seat Olympic stadium.