OLYMPIC GAMES:LONDON 2012 organisers remain unable to say how long it will be before the Olympic Games online ticket resale site is reopened. The resale site, which opened last Friday but was suspended the same day amid complaints that frustrated buyers were repeatedly clicking on tickets that were no longer available, was still closed yesterday.
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog) said on Friday that its ticketing partner Ticketmaster was working on rectifying the errors that plagued the site after it was launched at 9am.
The service was supposed to enable those who no longer wanted or could no longer use tickets bought in previous rounds, when more than four million of the 6.6 million tickets available to the British public were sold, the opportunity to resell their tickets.
The problems with the site, on top of criticism of earlier ticketing rounds and an oversight that led to 10,000 too many tickets being sold for the synchronised swimming, were an embarrassment for organisers on the day the British prime minister, David Cameron, chaired a cabinet meeting at the Olympic Park to mark 200 days to go. A Locog spokesman confirmed last night that there was no set time for when the site might reopen but that Ticketmaster was working on the problems.
“We have told Ticketmaster to suspend the resale system while they investigate,” said Locog on Friday. “We will reopen the site once Ticketmaster has resolved those issues.”
Locog, which will today formally assume control of the Olympic Park from the Olympic Delivery Authority responsible for building the venues, announced the launch of its “Join In” campaign yesterday.
The Locog website will list all Games-related events, from the Festival 2012 cultural programme to the torch relay and so-called “live sites” that will show the Games on big screens.
Locog chief executive Paul Deighton has said he fears the scale of the Olympics is not yet appreciated by the public.
Sebastian Coe, the Locog chairman, said yesterday: “The handover of the Olympic Park sounds the starting pistol in the race to get the site and venues ready to host the two biggest sporting events on the planet. In just 200 days’ time 200 countries – more than the membership of the United Nations – will be sending 15,000 athletes and 20,000 accredited media to London to create history. There is huge excitement ahead and we want the whole country to start planning their summer.”
On the competition front, Olympic organisers will know by mid-April whether the sprinter Dwain Chambers and the cyclist David Millar will be allowed to compete in the London Games, after the court of arbitration for sport said it would adjudicate on a dispute between the British Olympic Association and the World Anti-Doping Agency on March 12th.
The BOA has challenged Wada’s decision to rule it noncompliant with its global anti-doping code over a bylaw that imposes a lifetime Olympic ban on any athlete found guilty of a doping offence.
Wada made the ruling in the light of an earlier CAS decision that found in favour of LaShawn Merritt, the US Olympic 400m champion, over the International Olympic Committee, which saw its own rule banning any athlete that had served a suspension of more than six months from competing in the next Games overturned.
Most experts expect the BOA to lose but its legal team will argue the measure is an eligibility rule and not an additional sanction. If the BOA loses its appeal, Millar and Chambers will be free to compete at London 2012.
