London 2012: Road cycling tickets go on sale - BBC News
More tickets for road cycling events at the London Olympics are on sale, organiser Locog says.
Tickets are available for Box Hill in Surrey - where the road races can be viewed - and Hampton Court Palace, for the time trials.
Tickets priced from £5 to £15 are available on a first come, first served basis until they are sold out.
Box Hill is a special conservation area, but Locog said it was working to minimise the impact on wildlife.
The decision to charge for the 15,000 tickets being allocated to the prime viewing point has angered some local people, including local councillors, who say any profits from the event should go to ensuring the Olympics leave a legacy for the area.
Tickets providing access to The Hill and the big screen at Wimbledon - where the Olympic tennis events are being held - are also on sale, as well as tickets for the Orbit sculpture on the Olympic Park, Locog said.
The Orbit, which is between the Olympic Stadium and the Aquatics Centre, will give visitors a view of the entire park and across London's skyline.
BBC's Olympics correspondent James Pearce said he had been "inundated" by reports from people complaining that the London 2012 website was not working.
But the organisers said the problem had been resolved.
A London 2012 spokesperson said: "The sheer volume of demand meant that we managed transactions slowly in the first 20 minutes. However transactions now flowing through in their thousands."
Our correspondent tweeted that the site was meant to cope with 250,000 transactions an hour.
Unsold ticketsVisitors will be able to take a trip up the structure in a lift and have the option of walking down the spiral staircase.
Tickets for the Orbit are available only to those who have Olympic Park tickets or tickets for an event in the park, and only for the day they are due to visit, Locog said.
On Friday, the BBC reported that about 300,000 Olympics tickets that went on sale earlier this month remain unsold.
That is out of 928,000 put on general sale earlier this month and are in addition to the more than one million football tickets which remain unsold so far.
All tickets have been sold in some sports, including athletics, track cycling, equestrianism, rhythmic gymnastics and swimming.
The opening and closing ceremonies are also fully sold out.
But tickets are still available for sports including boxing, basketball, beach volleyball, weightlifting and football.
London 2012 - Argentine rowers bridge distance for London tilt - Yahoo! Eurosport
Ariel Suarez trains in Buenos Aires and Cristian Rosso 400 kilometres away in Mar del Plata but the Argentine rowers hope hard work and a helping hand from their French rivals will overcome the difficulties of training apart and let them shine at the London Olympics.
The Argentine duo have had to find a way to make their partnership work after teaming up two years ago. The Pan-American double sculls champions hope to do their country proud in London among a group of nations fighting it out behind the medal favourites.
Suarez and Rosso said their cause was helped by a productive training spell with the French team.
"We trained with the French national team and they told us we had a bright future, that the boat looked good but we had to iron out some issue we couldn't see here in Argentina," Suarez told Reuters in an interview.
"We improved a lot in technique, they gave us a lot of confidence. Physically we weren't able to improve much," he said at the national rowing centre in the suburb of Tigre in the delta of the Parana river.
"They showed us how they work ... The change was so big it was like a different sport, another way of rowing," said the 32-year-old, who has been competing since 2000.
After qualifying for the July 27-Aug. 12 London Games at a regatta in Slovenia, the South American pair's goal is to keep getting better, but they are aware that despite their improvements there are teams of a much higher standard.
"We're looking to improve on last year. We want to take that step, reach an 'A' final, that's our goal," Suarez said.
"Our keenness to improve isolates us from thoughts about going to an Olympic Games. That probably takes the pressure off and helps me relax."
The pair debuted together at a World Cup regatta in Switzerland in 2010. That same year they also took part in the world championships in New Zealand, finishing in the top 10 in their category and just outside the final.
Last year, they had an unhappy start with poor results in an old boat with the wrong oars, but there was a radical change at the World Cup in Hamburg where they won a silver medal.
"It was impressive, we didn't expect it," said Suarez.
That success led to two gold medals at the Pan-American Games in Guadalajara in October in the double and quadruple sculls.
"We live in different cities, he in Buenos Aires and I in Mar del Plata (400 km south on the Atlantic coast). We formed a group of four people with an agreed work plan," Rosso told Reuters.
"The coaches look to correct the same things despite the distance so as to work together on technique," the 28-year-old said.
The pair hope this way they will be able to edge closer to the big guns in rowing.
"There are two or three who can win medals, which are out of our reach. Then there are five or six, one or two seconds behind and we're there, from fourth place down," Rosso said.
"New Zealand, Australia, France and Germany are in the first Group. Then in the bunch you have Slovenia, Estonia, Norway, us, Canada, Lithuania. In that peloton of six boats, we want to try to be at the front, to be the first who are below those in the top level."
London close: Gains erased as Spanish yields advance - Life Style Extra
- Newsflow improves in Greece; New Democracy support increases
- Spanish concerns weigh on sentiment
London blue chips finished broadly flat on Monday as the initial optimism surrounding the Greek elections was outweighed in afternoon trade by ongoing concerns about Spain's finances.
Several opinion polls published this weekend showed the pro-bailout party New Democracy as the favourite to win the elections in Greece on June 17th. Specifically, five separate polls show New Democracy leading by a margin of 0.5 to 5.7 points. This would put the group ahead of the radical left wing Syriza party that opposes the terms of the second bailout signed with the "troika" (name given to the combination of the EU, the IMF and the ECB).
"The lead is only slim and could change before the elections on June 17th however this is looking very good for the Eurozone as it shows that Tsipras' promises of rejecting austerity while staying in the euro are starting the wear thin with the Greek public and with around 85% opposed to leaving the euro we could see New Democracy's lead grow," said Alpari analyst Craig Erlam.
However, concerns about Spain were also in focus today after the government was asked for 19bn in aid from troubled financial institution Bankia in order to strengthen its solvency. Rumours of further re-capitalisations across the sector were also doing the rounds. The yield on a Spanish 10-year bond jumped 16.8 basis points to 6.479% today. The STOXX Europe 600 Banks index finished 1.08% lower.
Equity markets are closed in Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Norway, Switzerland and the US today for a bank holiday.
FTSE 100: IAG flying low, BP drops on TNK-BP CEO resignation
Shares in British Airways parent International Airlines Group (IAG) fell after the president of Bankia (which holds a 12% interest in IAG) said the bank would sell assets to raise much needed funds. There were also reports that Madrid will look to privatise stakes in some state companies, which would include selling its stakes in companies such as IAG.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Russia's third-largest oil producer, TNK-BP, resigned today, with sources citing a breakdown in the relationship between BP and its joint venture partner, AAR. Fridman's resignation "represents a further breakdown in the relationship between TNK-BP's shareholders," one source close to AAR was reported to have said on Monday, adding that AAR has lost trust in the British firm. BP's shares were down nearly 2% by the close.
Retailers were firmly out of favour today with Kingfisher, Tesco and Sainsbury among the worst performers.
Heading the other way were miners with copper giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton tracking tracking copper prices higher on the back of falling stockpiles in China and favourable comments by Citigroup; Citi analyst Heath Jansen this morning adjusted his short-term view on the copper industry from bearish to neutral.
Outsourcing group Capita was on the up after UBS upgraded the stock from neutral to buy on the back of improving trading momentum combined with a depressed valuation. Aggreko was also benefitting from an upgrade from AlphaValue from sell to add.
FTSE 250: AVEVA jumps after full-year results
Engineering software company AVEVA surged on the second-tier index after it reported record profits for the 12 months ended March 21st as the firm capitalised on growing demand from deep-water oil and gas exploration. ??
Satellite group Inmarsat rose strongly after Jefferies upgraded its rating on the stock from hold to buy, saying that it now has greater visibility on the issues cited behind the August 2011 profit warning.
FTSE 100 - Risers
Weir Group (WEIR) 1,614.00p +3.99%
ITV (ITV) 78.95p +3.07%
Xstrata (XTA) 939.80p +2.98%
Capita (CPI) 629.00p +2.95%
Tullow Oil (TLW) 1,432.00p +2.65%
Rio Tinto (RIO) 2,857.50p +2.24%
Whitbread (WTB) 1,860.00p +2.14%
Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,401.00p +2.11%
ARM Holdings (ARM) 501.50p +2.10%
Rexam (REX) 400.70p +2.09%
FTSE 100 - Fallers
International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 137.10p -2.70%
BP (BP.) 399.70p -1.88%
Kingfisher (KGF) 274.90p -1.79%
Tesco (TSCO) 304.50p -1.63%
Resolution Ltd. (RSL) 199.50p -1.43%
Severn Trent (SVT) 1,680.00p -1.23%
British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSY) 691.50p -1.07%
Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 1,562.00p -0.95%
National Grid (NG.) 678.50p -0.88%
SSE (SSE) 1,348.00p -0.81%
FTSE 250 - Risers
Aveva Group (AVV) 1,638.00p +10.60%
Cape (CIU) 225.70p +10.10%
Aquarius Platinum Ltd. (AQP) 74.00p +8.74%
Dixons Retail (DXNS) 14.97p +7.01%
Ruspetro (RPO) 157.10p +5.72%
Ashtead Group (AHT) 231.40p +5.57%
Renishaw (RSW) 1,422.00p +5.18%
Ferrexpo (FXPO) 216.20p +4.75%
Genus (GNS) 1,247.00p +4.61%
Perform Group (PER) 345.10p +4.58%
FTSE 250 - Fallers
Essar Energy (ESSR) 109.00p -4.89%
Dunelm Group (DNLM) 486.50p -3.66%
PayPoint (PAY) 606.00p -2.26%
Heritage Oil (HOIL) 120.60p -1.71%
Beazley (BEZ) 135.00p -1.68%
Britvic (BVIC) 340.80p -1.50%
Computacenter (CCC) 353.00p -1.34%
Cranswick (CWK) 800.00p -1.23%
Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) 31.13p -1.17%
ITE Group (ITE) 195.00p -1.02%
BC
0 Responses to "London 2012: Road cycling tickets go on sale - BBC News"
Post a Comment