Well, the ticket-buying period is over! It was, we're told, a reasonably steady flow of purchasing, apart from two things. Firstly, the 2012 committee didn’t allow anyone to purchase tickets through the website with a card that expired before June – oops. Cue uproar. And secondly, anyone who had any contact with any Olympic site received an email about six hours before the booking site was about to close, declaring that the chance to buy tickets for the greatest show on earth (not even my words, there) was about to slip away. So there was quite a last minute surge of panic buying in the final few hours, and hopefully people did okay out of it.
And what was the result of all this buying, or in fact, balloting, because the point here is that you’re only putting your name into the hat to be considered? Well, the Olympic committee jubilantly announced that over half the events were oversubscribed. Let’s just think about that for a second, shall we? What does that mean? It means that for nearly half the events there are still tickets available. I mean, presumably, just because you miss out on the event you actually requested, you don’t get offered another random event as a consolation prize. Imagine the chaos of working that.
So, what we can reasonably determine from this is that there will be available tickets come the big day (okay, weeks), and it’s not game over if you didn’t try to get any.
With that in mind, let’s move onto the post – we’re on letter E of the A to Z of the 2012 Olympics, and frankly there’s not too much to be said about it. Here, however, is what there is:
Events
We're going to do a quick rundown on this. To start with, the 2012 Olympics will feature 26 events. London bid for 28, which was par for the course, but the International Olympics Committee wanted to drop baseball and softball (quite right too; how are they sports?) and couldn’t agree on what to replace them with. Apparently neither Karate nor Squash were considered good enough contenders. Ouch. On other matters, women’s boxing has been added to the list, which is extremely exciting. And here is the full list:
Archery
Athletics
Badminton
Basketball
Boxing
Canoeing (Sprint and Slalom)
Cycling (BMX, Mountain Biking, Road and Track)
Diving
Equestrian
Fencing
Field Hockey
Football
Gymnastics (Artistic, Rhythmic and Trampolining)
Handball
Judo
Modern Pentathlon
Rowing
Sailing
Shooting (Shooting? Really? What era do we live in, really?)
Swimming
Synchronised Swimming
Table Tennis
Taekwondo
Tennis
Triathlon
Volleyball
Water Polo
Weightlifting
Wrestling
Any on there that surprise you? Any you would have expected to see that aren’t there?
Equestrian
Equestrian is our “E” event of choice – our only choice, in fact – and I’m really glad we still have it. Apart from the fact that it gives me something to write about, horse riding events are much more hardcore than they look and generally present quite a spectacle.
There are three main equestrian events, each of which will be medalled separately for individuals and teams. They are dressage, jumping and eventing. You’d think Britain would be outstanding at riding, what with all that history behind them, but actually Germany and the US did best overall, with Canada coming in third.
Equestrian events have been in the Olympics almost consistently since 1900, and hold a lot of popularity.
EDF Energy
EDF Energy are only worth mentioning in this context due to the image they are presenting. They are an official sponsor of the Olympics – meaning they must be throwing a staggering amount of money at the Games – and their tagline seems to be all about “helping ensure that the Olympics are truly sustainable”. Doubtless, the UK is feeling a lot of pressure right now to be as green as they can possibly be, and getting an energy company on board for financial backing is interesting.