In case you missed it, Torino's slogan is 'Passion Lives Here' and it certainly does seem true. Yesterday, we spent 3 hours queuing for the 400 tickets to the medal plaza that were made available for free to anyone. In the end, we missed out by about 20 places, but the experience was enlightening. Many of the people in the queue seemed more aware of and interested in the artist who would be performing, than the athletes who would be receiving medals. That night, the first, it was Andrea Boccelli, so the italians were particularly passionate about obtaining tickets. A few arguments broke out and people soon became strategic in their attempt to obtain a ticket. We overheard some people talking about buying them from others and a couple of times, we saw people offer their tickets to others.
The frustration came in the evening when seeing many of the seats empty. It is clear that the sale of tickets does not rate particularly highly for an organising committee, but it seems that it would be wonderful to avoid these situations, which seem to happen over and over again.
I think today, we will go direct to the Plaza in the evening and see if we can benefit from someone's generosity. Who can spend 3hrs queuing in Olympic Fortnight? I'm just glad i had my LifeDrive and a stack of reading.