All the latest ticket news from Rio 2016
* Mario Andrade, Rio 2016’s communications executive director, admitted that organisers are still working on a solution to the large number of empty seats at Olympic venues as the Games reaches its half-way stage. While more than 200,000 free tickets for sports considered to be of little interest to Brazilians have been handed to local schoolchildren, even events such as beach volleyball have failed to sell out. “We see some empty spaces in stadiums, we are working on it,” said Andrada.
* The Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) claims that tickets found in the possession of alleged touts in Rio were issued to Pro-10 Sports Management by the Rio 2016 organisers. OCI president Pat Hickey said “there is no impropriety whatsoever from anyone in the OCI or myself in the dealing of tickets”. The OCI wrote to the Rio organisers and the International Olympic Committee and was awaiting replies from both parties, he added.
* The father of Irish silver medal-winning rowers Gary and Paul O’Donovan missed their semi-final yesterday (Thursday) due to complex ticketing procedures at the Lagoa rowing centre. Having travelled all the way from Cork, Teddy O’Donovan had tickets to watch his sons compete on Wednesday. However, that day’s competition was cancelled due to adverse weather and his tickets were not automatically transferred to Thursday. Teddy said: “We were given a code number to show them. Getting a place inside was only on availability and unfortunately we did not get any Thursday tickets.” However, his disappointment was abated by seeing his sons gain a silver medal in the men’s lightweight double sculls final today (Friday).
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