Way back in the 80's my dad used to spend most of his weekends plonked in his favourite armchair postponing any DIY plans watching Dickie Davies Saturday afternoon's presenting World of Sport. With me playing with my matchbox/corgi cars on the living room floor. looking up from time to time Sport would be the first thing I would see. It wasn't long before I then started to annoy my dad in mid viewing asking questions in an attempt to understand the sport for me then to turn round to my dad asking if I could a) start playing football. B) Start running c) become a wrestler like Big Daddy you just know my dad crossed off option C straight away ignoring me!
This is probably where my fanatical passion of sports first started as (some of you may know) Football, Athletics and F1 are my biggest passions. I can remember seeing the black and gold JPS lotus cars roaring around Formula 1 tracks, Tottenham Hotspurs winning the UEFA Cup. The best team (Brazil) not winning the 1982 world cup finals? As for the 1984 LA Olympics, Lord Coe, Tessa Sanderson, Daly Thompson's gold medals even Carl Lewis on fire for the USA.
So as a huge fan of sport and its history of great people associated in the record books you honestly must imagine how excited! I was hearing the Great Britain actually wanted to host an Olympic games. An Olympic Games in my back yard? GREAT! I get slightly annoyed hearing my dad tell me about the World cup in 1966 and how fans felt before, during and after with a nation of euphoria that I am jealous and I want an event of that scale to see for myself. Now clearly down to FIFA's recent and well publicised (ahem blatant) corruption we don't' appear to be having a world cup for quite some time or even ever within my lifetime! So the next best thing on such a scale is to witness an Olympic games. I can take my children to such a great and historical event to which they can witness and tell their children, a tale I can tell my grandchildren and as I believe, I will live forever, even to my great grandchildren. I cheered like mad for Lord Coe to win his Olympic medal in 1984 and if he brings a successful Olympic Games to London, I will change his "Lord" status to "GOD"
Now as you can probably see I am pro Olympic Games (well ..... my gripe comes later!) but what really, really does get my back up is the people that are anti Olympic Games. Now I'm not saying you 'must' support and agree with the games particularly if you are not a fan of the sport, it's not compulsory that you do. Likewise I'm not a huge fan of golf or cricket, my knowledge goes a s far as Ian Botham and Nick Faldo (as you can see, limited!) but I do not sit and moan, moan, moan about this non stop at home/work criticising the Ryder Cup or the Ashes. Moaning is not going to make this event go away! It maybe a hard few weeks for these non, supporting fans to try and ignore this event in the media and with people discussing it vocally but like it or not the fact is that the Olympic games IS coming to the UK and will be a huge occasion. For some this is a once in a lifetime event and like it or not, it will be a part of our history for many years to come. London will be on the Olympic calendar with a list of athletes names of records and achievements and hopefully London will have a glowing reputation of holding a successful Olympic Games. Yes it will cost a lot of money to build venues and organise a schedule and assuming you're a hard working citizen some of your taxes obviously we be placed in funding this event but surely this will have created jobs for people and be a start of a good infrastructure improving the surrounding areas. Created (safe) playing and training areas for our future generation of children. The ticket returns and souvenir sales "should" even things back out when the games are on? I haven't a crystal ball like many to confirm that this will even happen but this is the theory!...for every country that do host the Olympic Games and surely in this day and age you realise... money talks?
Now this write up is about my experience with the Olympic Games. To some you may end up gloating and laughing to which I can see why. With Great Britain winning the 2012 games bid and me regularly driving through the Blackwall tunnel on match days to Tottenham (queue jokes) I have seen the Olympic site take shape and impressive it is too. I have followed all instructions by the Olympic committee to get tickets you must register on the website to which I did a year ago. I have received all email notifications within this time and made calendar reminders in my phone as to when I could view the Olympic event schedule and when I could apply for tickets. I worked out when my daughter would break up for the summer holidays and planned my holidays I could take off from work. As a family, we spent ages planning what sports we would like to see, on what day and how much we were willing to spend for these events. Like many others, basically we tried to edge our bets in an attempt to get to see "something" Now between us our applications came to just over £1,000. Quite a frightening amount to cough up if we were to get everything we applied for? Well our events covered Gymnastics, Tennis and athletics. At various times (morning/evening) accommodating children who pay for tickets depending on how old they are.
Now this is when I'm beginning to show my disapproval. As the deadline for applying for tickets approached, (remember people have had a month to apply for their tickets). Out of nowhere there was a frigging extension granted to people applying for tickets past the well publicised cut off time of 23:59!!... one question WHY?
Then while the powers that be behind the scenes allocated tickets we all sat logging onto our online banking hoping to see a mystery withdrawal to which we would then have to try and workout what we applied for and what Olympic tickets we may have just bought? Well low and behold the payment deadline past and between my family we got nothing! I felt rather naive because edging our bets we could not get anything? Not a cheap morning session with the gymnastics/athletics. Not an early round of the tennis. Athletic session in the evening.... Nothing! I couldn't believe it. Of course the media started telling stories of successful applications and obviously some people around be would be lucky but it appears the trend of successful applicants were the ones who could afford to spend the most. A man applied for £36,000 work of thickets and obtained £8,000? ... £8,000 what could they possibly be for then? How about the applications from people after the scheduled deadline! I hope to god these people weren't successful because that’s blatant queue-jumping if you ask me! a right pi$$ take!
With a huge cry of uproar around the nation. Ticket allocation was somehow still defended by the committee. To calm us all down, a second chance for us losers was to be made available at the end of June on a first come first served basis, so all was not lost as we were told some large amount of tickets was still left remaining? I did think that a little strange but waited for the list to be printed of current availability. Now this is for me wanting in the region of six tickets for the above sports to mix and match on any day. Well when i saw the list my first reaction was of complete ungratefulness as i thought i cannot be asked. There was loads of tickets left for lets be honest amateur football with er, wrestling canoeing and i couldn’t believe the Olympic committee said there were loads of tickets left? Slight trickery here because of course not all football stadiums are full for matches but you can not seriously say tickets are available for events/sports that most of the nation are not too interested in. That’s being honest not a dig! Depressed i still logged on at 6:00 Friday 24th June in a last attempt to see anything i fancy. Nope all tickets had gone and the website still ran as slow as websites did back in the day when i had a Windows 95 computer with a 33.3kb modem! Now if you're too young to even know what i'm on about here? This was a very slow internet connection that after typing in a web address we all waited for the web page to load. We could go away and make a cup of tea, come back to our computer and the web page still would not have loaded. To which we were charged by the minute to use!! People today with fibre optic cable that load web pages instantly woah! what a luxury! And after i experienced this 1995 web site speed again, I soon logged the off with my hands thrown into the air saying “I give up!
To date there are still sports that have not been sold out. Nope i cant be asked to pay to see Football, Volleyball or wrestling but i am told a general sale will take place at the end of the year and a very, very last ditch effort will take place next year when the ticket exchange scheme goes live. Hmmm not many people will bombard the website that day either will they?
I therefore predict already in July 2011 that there will be more stress, grief and tears when we use the exchange scheme.
I know there are thousands who have experienced the above and feel a bit bitter (naturally) I therefore say to the lucky, lucky people going to the Olympics, congratulations! (seriously i do) Enjoy the occasion. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and I (still) envy you!
