Rate it!

0 votes

British athletes' families will be guaranteed tickets for the London 2012 Olympics after many were forced to resort to the black market in Beijing.

In the summer, the parents of double gold medal-winning swimmer Rebecca Adlington paid out £1,100 to con artists for Beijing tickets that did not exist, while the parents of cycling's triple gold medallist Chris Hoy only managed to watch him after being given tickets by a sponsor at the last minute.

The British Olympic Association have now secured an agreement with London organisers for an allocation of tickets for families and talks will now follow on the number that can be provided.

BOA chairman Colin Moynihan said: ''The BOA raised this at the London organising committee board meeting this morning - our first priority is an allocation of tickets to the athletes.

''The principle has been agreed and we will be sitting down in 10 days' time to discuss the detail of that - how many and how we organise that.

''We definitely learned from Beijing to make sure the athletes' immediate families are there to see their events and enjoy the Games.

''There were a number of cases. Chris Hoy and a number of the cyclists in a small velodrome didn't receive the tickets we would have hoped they would receive.

''We were not the host nation then but we have learned that lesson and we cannot have that. The athletes have given their lives to be members of Team GB and their family should be given the opportunity of enjoying the Games around them.''

Moynihan was speaking after a press conference following the Beijing Olympics debriefing, held in London to give 2012 Games organisers a chance to learn from the previous hosts.

The issue of tickets generally was one of the major subjects after the embarrassing spectacle of rows of empty seats in Beijing.

SportingLife / Eurosport