Olympics -the games of shame?

alanf

Absolutely pssd off at not getting any tickets like most of us. Why did they not introduce a choice system. ie you list your ticket wants in order of preference? You get your first choice of tickets and your 'e out no more purchases allowed etc. I couldnt afford to risk more than £400 but if i was loaded I could afford to risk much more and probably get what I wanted.

Hey ho at least i can watch the road race at Box Hill, no some jobsworth has declared Box Hill off limits to public.

Let me point out something to The National Trust, You hold that land in trust for members of the public like me so i would suggest you stop messing around and announce it will be open for spectators, and at least give the ticketless masses a day to remember.

Not only that but if you organised things like catering etc you would probably end up with enough cash to Run BH for 10 years afterwards!

Seb Coe? Typical Tory! Pandering to the corporates/the rich at the expense of the little guy.
I always liked Steve Ovett better!

Cressers

And don't forget the £200 fine for cyclists who dare to ride in the special Olympic ZIL lanes...

jibberjim

Because order of preference does absolutely nothing to solve the ticketing problem of millions of people wanting to watch very few events. And all of these proposals to "spread" the tickets around would not have been fairer at all but simply have penalised the people who are interested in supporting less popular events as well as the marquee ones.

Why should the person who's interested enough to watch the first round of the greco roman wrestling be less deserving of watching the team pursuit final than someone who doesn't want to watch anything else?

If you simply want to watch some of the olympics there are plenty of football tickets available, if you simply care about a couple of events - then the ballot which was done was a very fair way of choosing.

Pross

Maybe they should put whinging in as one of the sports then large chunks of Britain can attend the game as competitors. It's the idiots like the guy complaining he had bid for £x thousand worth of tickets and only got archery which he didn't really want but as he had a ticket he doesn't get priority in the second ballot who are to blame. If people had only gone for the sports they actually wanted to watch then maybe others would have got the tickets they wanted.

There is no fair way of spreading the tickets, especially not the way some of the locals being interviewed on TV felt - i.e. it is on their doorstep so they should have had priority!

How long is the road race route? There is plenty of space for millions of fans to watch it free of charge and the NT are just protecting one part of the course - if anyone has seen the state of an alpine pass after a major bike race they would see the point probably!

shouldbeinbed

They hold the land in trust for members of the national trust, they aren't the government and receive no funding from them. the NT no more hold land in trust for members of the public that tesco does under its stores and car parks.

the NT just happens to open its acquisitions up to fee paying customers at its discretion. its obvoiusly decided that it doesn'twant to have hte clean up and repair expense for a one off event that will be thronged and unlikely to be left tidy afterwards.

as for the olympic tickets, maybe you should be buttering up the sponsors for a few of the thousands of free tickets they've got.

JC.152

I can understand the NT's point over preservation, but surely this should have been told to the Olympic planners years ago, so a different road could be used rather than restrictions, that I think will be difficult to enforce as there could be thousands of fans that just trek across and camp out the night before

Monty Dog

When this arose they could have easily re-routed the race up Leith Hill via Coldharbour for example and made a real spectacle of it - 9 laps would really rip up the field, problem is it would make it more likely that Gilbert would win over Cav, which isn't part of the Olympic plan :?

ziggycycledust

I applied for almost £500worth of tickets and didn't get a single one, whilst i don't think the ticketing system was by any means perfect i don't think I'm quite as angry as others.

At the end of the day I'm unbelievably excited that the olympics is coming to London. Even if i can't get into any of the venues I'm going to watch every free event - marathon, cycling road race, triathlon etc. as well as loads of sports i would never even dream of watching at any other time on the tele. Every 4 years i suddenly become an expert and uber fan of sports from squash to equestrian.

I can't wait to go to London and soak up the atmosphere, (and i think it will be funny watching people from weird countries getting the hang of things like the tube!)

I really get annoyed with people consistently moaning about the London Olympics - i love the olympics, the ethos of the games and its universal appeal.

I hope that all the moaners stay at home so they don't act as a bad advert for the country.

That being said, i don't see how difficult it would have been to assign a certain percentage or number of tickets for each sport to the controlling body of that sport to hand out to registered clubs/athletes as a separate ballot. Ie. British cycling gets 10% of tickets per cycling event that only people with a British cycling membership could apply for... that way you can guarantee at least a certain percentage of the stadium would have fans of that particular sport. But that is the glory of hindsight - perhaps ill get in touch with Rio De Janeiro!

ziggycycledust

And also...

alanf wrote:

Seb Coe? Typical Tory! Pandering to the corporates/the rich at the expense of the little guy.
I always liked Steve Ovett better!

I don't think this is really a case of Tory bashing either. I'm pretty sure that the Guardian (not even the 'Torygraph') reported that big Boris Johnson refused to accept corporate tickets and applied in the ballot like everyone else - and is likewise empty-handed.

Pokerface

I'm participating the Games (Paralympics obviously) and can't even guarantee my family (mother flying over from Canada) will get tickets for my events! I applied for tickets like anyone else, and judging by the fact some money is missing from my account - got allocated some tickets- but not ALL of the ones she wanted. Can you imagine - I might win a medal - and the one person who came 5000 miles to see it happen won;t be able to get in!

ziggycycledust

Pokerface wrote:

I'm participating the Games (Paralympics obviously) and can't even guarantee my family (mother flying over from Canada) will get tickets for my events! I applied for tickets like anyone else, and judging by the fact some money is missing from my account - got allocated some tickets- but not ALL of the ones she wanted. Can you imagine - I might win a medal - and the one person who came 5000 miles to see it happen won;t be able to get in!

Was there no provision for competing athletes families? Thats terrible! I didn't realise that! Perfect time to write to my MP... oh wait, its John Bercow, now the midget dwarfman is speaker no one represents my views. At least i could have voted for Labour or Lib Dems instead... oh wait, no i couldn't they didn't contest. It was him or big Nigel 'Lets get out of the EU then start thinking about other policies' Farage!

I guess the only positive you can take is that by you not getting all the tickets you will be competing in front of sell-out crowds, which is fantastic (and relatively rare) for the Paralympics. But still obviously little consolation....

Pokerface

ziggycycledust wrote:

Pokerface wrote:

I'm participating the Games (Paralympics obviously) and can't even guarantee my family (mother flying over from Canada) will get tickets for my events! I applied for tickets like anyone else, and judging by the fact some money is missing from my account - got allocated some tickets- but not ALL of the ones she wanted. Can you imagine - I might win a medal - and the one person who came 5000 miles to see it happen won;t be able to get in!

Was there no provision for competing athletes families? Thats terrible! I didn't realise that! Perfect time to write to my MP... oh wait, its John Bercow, now the midget dwarfman is speaker no one represents my views. At least i could have voted for Labour or Lib Dems instead... oh wait, no i couldn't they didn't contest. It was him or big Nigel 'Lets get out of the EU then start thinking about other policies' Farage!

I guess the only positive you can take is that by you not getting all the tickets you will be competing in front of sell-out crowds, which is fantastic (and relatively rare) for the Paralympics. But still obviously little consolation....

The problem with the Games - is that the majority of athletes don't actually know who is going to be there yet. Many sports are still in the qualifying phase - and final selections of athletes aren't made until just a few months prior. Each sport has it's own qualification system and some people will already know they are going but for the most part - it's all very much up in the air for many people.

Therefore, as the Olympics/Paralympics is a business and they need to sell as many fix as possible, they can't hold any fix back at this stage.

But you are correct in saying that it will be a nice change to play to a packed house for a change - and I'm sure that I'll find a way to get my parents tickets somehow!

jibberjim

Pokerface wrote:

But you are correct in saying that it will be a nice change to play to a packed house for a change - and I'm sure that I'll find a way to get my parents tickets somehow!

Once you're confirmed as competing you should get at least 2 tickets for the session, but that doesn't happen until it's confirmed you're competing.