Foreign Visitors Sell Tickets To Augment Finances

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26841, 4 August 1948, Page 5

Foreign Visitors Sell Tickets To Augment Finances

Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, Aug. 3. Foreign Olympic officials, competitors and visitors tried to sell Olympic Games tickets to queues waiting to see the swimming events at Wembley Pool. The Games attendants ordered them off the premises. The overseas visitors said they bought blocks of tickets before leaving their own countries in the hope or selling them in London to increase the English money allowed them. One visiting official said, “We were allowed so little money that we could not possibly have met all the expenses of the trip, if we did not sell some of our tickets.” Most of the foreign sellers were not demanding prices above the face value of the tickets. An Olympic official said the committee was taking rigid steps to see that “ ticket touts ” did not operate. Among the foreigners trying to sell tickets were Frenchmen and Finns. One French official said, “ Our country allowed us £9 each to spend in London, and we are almost broke.” A Finnish rthlete pleaded to the crowd, “I haven’t any money left. Please buy a ticket.” Reuter’s Paris correspondent says the French athletes blame insufficient “ plain quality ” food for some of their Olympic failures. The special London correspondent of the Paris newspaper, L’lntransigeant, quotes a girl athlete saying that her diet consisted of “ crudities ” —cucumbers, tomatoes, beetroot and meat. ‘‘As for wine, we tasted it for the first time yesterday. Do they imagine that because we are women' we prefer milk? ”