BY the time you are reading this, I will either be jumping for joy or hopping mad.
For today is the day I find out if my second bid for Olympic tickets has been successful. What a performance this has been!
Several weeks ago, we applied for £500 worth of seats to see a variety of sports: athletics, gymnastics, cycling and diving. We knew we were swimming against the tide in hoping for them all, but thought we’d have a fighting chance of getting some.
Result: nada, not a sausage.
What were the organisers thinking? They run a system where two thirds of the 1.9 million sports lovers who applied for the 5.3 million tickets finished in last place with nothing. There are a total of 7.7 million Olympic 2012 tickets, so where are the other 2.4 million?
Well, the discredited officials at FIFA have walked away with millions of tickets and other freebies. I suppose this is par for the course. These people are obviously more highly valued than the likes of cyclist and Olympic medal winner Bradley Wiggins, who, like us, was left empty handed.
Twelve years ago we applied for tickets to the Sydney Olympics. We got virtually every ticket we requested – and for a quarter of the price of the London ones. We even had seats for the night Aboriginal sprinter Cathy Freeman won the 400 metres in front of her home crowd – one of the greatest moments in modern Olympics. Unfortunately, we had to cancel due to family illness.
The Olympic organisers are skating on thin ice if they think the sports-loving British public will take this fiasco lying down.
I have decided not to throw in the towel just yet, however, so I set my alarm for 5.30am yesterday to apply for what was left.
If this bid isn’t successful, I’m going to take my bat home. They’ll have to hold the Olympics without me.
