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Scuffles break out at last ticket venue

A cameraman from Hong Kong Cable TV is restrained from photographing the crowd waiting to buy tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympics yesterday in Beijing, China. PHOTO: AP

Eager fans swarmed sales windows in Beijing yesterday to get the final batch of Olympic tickets after waiting up to two days for a chance to see next month’s games in person.

Scuffles broke out at one ticket site as officials opened additional sales windows, causing some fans to stampede ahead of others in a bid to buy some of the 250,000 tickets on sale, but an official said the start of the sale went well.

“There were so many people who wanted tickets so we decided to open more ticket windows ... In general, so far the ticket sale has gone smoothly,” Sun Weide (孫維德) said, spokesman for Beijing’s Olympic organizing committee.

In addition to the pushing among fans, several Hong Kong media outlets complained about being pushed around by security officials.

Footage from Hong Kong Cable TV showed a policeman putting his arm around the neck of a Hong Kong Cable TV reporter and pulling him to the ground.

The reporter said he was assaulted after his crew refused to leave a media zone, Cable TV reported. They were seen surrounded by dozens of police.

A spokeswoman for Hong Kong Cable TV said it was “unacceptable” for Chinese authorities to treat the media that way.

“We hope the authorities will live up to their earlier promise to allow full freedom of the press during the Olympic Games,” Shum Siu-wah said.

Zhang Xiaojing, 17, who came from Changzhou in Hebei Province to buy tickets, said the line was pretty orderly when she arrived on Thursday afternoon, but there was an uncontrolled rush early yesterday when the additional sales windows opened.

“People started to stampede in,” she said.

But for others like Xue Manjie, the wait was worth it. The 19-year-old and eight friends bought tickets after waiting since Thursday morning.

“We can’t get the tickets for the games we want but at least we can have a look inside the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest,” Xue said, referring to the swimming venue and the main athletics stadium, while flashing his tickets.

Xue and his friends, who just finished their university entrance exams, wanted tickets to the basketball, but had to settle for synchronized swimming and preliminary track and field events.

At Wukesong in the western part of Beijing, tens of thousands of people were lined up to buy tickets for the popular basketball competition. About 20,000 basketball tickets were expected to go on sale.

Besides the Olympics tickets for events in Beijing, another 570,000 tickets are on sale for soccer matches in co-host cities: Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang and Qinhuangdao.

All told 6.8 million Olympic tickets have been available for domestic and foreign sales. The Olympics start on Aug. 8.

Organizers were embarrassed last November when the computer system crashed, forcing organizers to sack the Olympic ticketing chief and revert to a lottery system to sell tickets.
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