|
 |   |
|
INTERNATIONAL NEWS EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
U.S. Olympians could lose ticket perk
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Parents of U.S. Olympians could be left out in the cold during the Opening and Closing Ceremonies at the 2002 Winter Games. U.S. Olympic Committee officials say they can no longer afford to buy expensive ceremony tickets for parents of American athletes. The perk may disappear when the USOC executive board approves a four-year budget Friday. With Salt Lake organizers fetching $885 a ceremony seat, and with 206 U.S. athletes expected at the Salt Lake games, the subsidy has gotten too expensive, USOC Chairwoman Sandra Baldwin said Tuesday. "Money certainly has always been a factor," she said. "Everything has gotten more expensive for the Olympic Games, including the cost of putting them on, the cost of construction and certainly the cost of training and competition for athletes." Ceremony tickets also are hard to come by, Baldwin said. Salt Lake's opening ceremony already has sold out for U.S. fans, though organizers plan to add 6,000 seats to a 46,000-seat stadium near downtown to meet demand. At last summer's Sydney Games, the USOC found enough ceremony tickets for only a quarter of the parents of 603 U.S. athletes. So U.S. officials had to devise a complicated lottery to dole out the available tickets, Baldwin said. The USOC still will supply U.S. athletes with two tickets for each of their competitions so family or friends can watch at no charge. But ceremonies are getting too expensive even for the world's richest national Olympic committee. "It's sad but also understandable that the USOC can no longer do it," said Anita DeFrantz, who sits on the boards of the U.S., international and Salt Lake Olympic committees. At the USOC, she said, "We've discussed it many times: how much would it cost, could our budget bear it, was it something families were saving for already?" The USOC may give athletes a choice of taking ceremony or competition tickets, Baldwin said, or making a limited number of ceremony tickets available by lottery. Ken Bullock, a trustee for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, said it shouldn't have to be that way. If anyone deserves to attend Olympic festivities, he said, it's parents who have invested as much as athletes in their training and support. Bullock suggested SLOC could make room at ceremonies for parents of U.S. athletes. But SLOC spokeswomen Caroline Shaw said organizers depend on ticket revenue and adopted a policy of giving away no tickets, even to SLOC trustees or Utah politicians. Credentials will go only to International Olympic Committee delegates, the media and venue workers and volunteers.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
