… And the gold medal for Olympic bureaucracy goes to the blundering organising committee for demanding mums pay for seats for their yet to be born children if they have a ticket for an event and want to take baby as well.

Ticket rules for the Olympic Games say every baby attending an event must have a ticket for a seat somewhere in the venue, even if they are sitting on their mother’s lap.

As the tickets were on sale 15 months before the starting pistol is fired for the first event, it’s difficult to see how many mums could predict they would need the extra seat – and don’t think about mums who have had twins.

Now, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has indicated the ticket policy may be discriminatory against mums, which threatens to throw the whole Olympics ticketing process in to disarray.

Mums don’t know whether to buy a ticket for their babies – who have to go with them if they are being breast-fed – or whether they are allowed in if they share their seat with mum.

Many mums are concerned they will have to miss their chance of a lifetime to attend a blue-riband Olympic event because of the rule, says web site Mumsnet, which has been inundated with posts about the ticket debacle.

A London 2012 spokesman said: “Of course, we understand that some new mums may want to take their babies to events they have tickets to and we will look at what we can do when the remaining tickets go on sale in April.”

The EHRC has challenged the Olympic ticket organisers to prove they can justify the rules for mums and babies.

“A business must not do something which has a worse affect on you and on other people who share a particular protected characteristic, such as gender, than it has on people who do not share that characteristic. Unless the business can show that what they have done is objectively justified, this will be what is called indirect discrimination,” said a spokesman.

Under the rules, pregnant mums do not have to buy additional tickets.