The Maleficent Gods of Mt. Olympus

Greetings all, I hope you're well. Here is Part 1 of a two-part series on the Winter Olympics.

I've been simmering in disappointment for some time on our inability to secure Olympics tickets for Vancouver 2010, and been meaning to write about it. As with all things in time, my negative energy has effervesced, and I'm officially over it. Well, at least until coverage starts next February, at which time it will undoubtedly resurface.

Kathy and I were fortunate to make it to the Torino Winter Olympics in 2006 (much more on that below, in Part 2), which were quite easy to get to, since we were already living in Italy at the time. How great to make it two for two, since we're already in the Seattle area and could 'just drive up' to Vancouver and Whistler.

Au contraire, mon fraire. Apparently, we didn't sacrifice enough to the gods of Olympus this time around. Either that, or we pissed them off when I stopped listening to Yanni. (He did chop his locks and shave his mustache in a fit of Sampsonian creativity, so what was I to do?) A year ago we signed up for the ticket lottery, patiently waited for the 2 week window (last fall) and submitted our humble requests: 2 tickets each in men's skiing (Super-G to be exact), 4 man bobsled, ski-jumping, and biathlon (it's much more exciting than you think. I'm sure the same might be said for curling but I'm not willing to find out). Back in Torino, we went to see ski/bobsled/ski jump, and were psyched to go back for more.

Along comes an ominous message in December: "Due to unexpected demand, we're taking longer to divvy up tickets, so we'll let you know in January and blah blah blah." No problem, I'm sure figure skating and hockey have sold out. Won't affect us at all.... And then the thunderbolt from Olympus: denied, denied, denied, 2 tickets to biathlon. Congratulations, you're a lucky winner! That will be $250, thank you very much. You'll get tickets in the mail in a year. Thanks for playing!

I had to read the email twice to make sure I understood it correctly. I hit the first 3 stages of grief immediately: denial, anger, bargaining. To no avail, of course; we were shut out. Oh, wait, in fine print at the bottom was a note indicating a second ticket release for the scraps left over would be held as first-come-first-served (ie scramble) during a narrow window this spring, and if I wanted to participate, come back then.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised that ticket demand would be so high. Canadians would get first dibs on tickets (rightly so) with the remaining 40% going to the outside world. But still, these weren't high vis events, like figure skating or hockey. I began to poke around the tubes of the internets to see if anyone else had problems getting tickets. Lo and behold, seems like plenty of people had a grievance to air. And I found this article from the Seattle Times to the same effect, if you care to read it.

Apparently, the demand from the US overwhelmed the organizing committee, with 167,000 requests for 14,000 tickets. This I can understand, simple supply and demand. But wait.... Those 14,000 tickets available to the US only make up 3% of the total ticket count. 3%? Really? Rumors surfaced all through those tubes that the Olympics had 'sold out' to 3rd party brokers long before sales were opened up to the public, which only helped fuel my ire and proclaim THE INJUSTICE of the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC). With tickets for only one (one!) event and virtually no chance of getting any more (short of donating a kidney to a sidewalk scalper), we decided it wasn't worth the expense just to watch Scandinavian Viking men shoot targets and cross country ski (wait, why did we put in for those...?)

Now here's the really interesting part. As I was digging around for some link (any link) to support my contention that tickets were all but gone (I know I read it somewhere!), I discovered this bit of news as I composed this blog, literally posted yesterday. Hope lives! (Good thing I waited to post this blog, or else it might have taken an entirely different path.) Seems like the organizers are just a bunch of funny guys trying to be funny. "Tens of thousands of tickets to regular Games events will go on sale in early June.... The last batch had been held back." The date of the post is April 2nd, so it shouldn't be an April Fool's joke. Right?

And so I'm back where I was, a minnow in a large school of fish looking for something to chew. But I've already received my diploma from Kubler-Ross, and have attained a level of near zen-like acceptace. I'm not keeping my hopes up this time around. I am lying to myself, of course. I rather like the taste of sour grapes from time to time. So for the future, expect one of two updates to come of this: either I'll write in exaltation come June, or I'll post some long and wistful musings on the meaning of I COULD HAVE BEEN THERE come next February.

Alas, time to let it go. Part 2 below is about our experiences at the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics, which will just have to do for now....