Olympic Officials Try To Sell Games Tickets To Queues

Wanganui Chronicle, 4 August 1948, Page 5

Olympic Officials Try To Sell Games Tickets To Queues

Recd. 10.20 a.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 the Wembley pool. Games attendants ordered them off the premises. Overseas visitors said they bought blocks of tickets before leaving their own countries in the hope of selling them in London to increase the English money allowed them. One visiting official said: “We were allowed so little money we couldn’t possibly have met all the trip’s expenses if we did not sell some of our tickets.’’

Most foreign sellers were not demanding prices above the tickets' face value. 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. A French official said. "Our country allowed us iS each to spend in London and we are almost broke.” A Finnish athlete pleaded to the crowd: “I haven’t any money left. Please buy a ticket.” ■ Reuter’s Paris correspondent says French athletes blame the insufficient “plain quality” food for some of their Olympics failures. The special .London correspondent of “I’lntransij'geant” quotes a girl athlete as saying 'that the diet consisted of “crudities”— I cucumbers, tomatoes, beetroot, meat. i“As for wine, we tasted it foy the first time yesterday. Do they imagine I that because we are women we prefer milk?”