Knight insists on cheap tickets
5 June 1998There would be no backing down on the commitment to provide cheap tickets for the 2000 Sydney Games, New South Wales Olympics Minister Michael Knight said yesterday.
The Sydney Organising Committee presented its ticketing policy to the International Olympic Committee executive board here on Tuesday and hopes to have it approved before the next board meeting in Seoul in September.
The policy includes cheap seats at a number of sports and expensive premium tickets for events such as the opening and closing ceremonies and swimming and athletics finals, which it has been estimated could cost about $1800.
Some of the board members were surprised at the proposed prices of prime seats, which are significantly higher than for the 1996 Atlanta Games.
"Generally speaking, a number of members felt we must be extremely careful before approving any higher prices. This was the general feeling which was expressed," IOC director general Francois Carrard said.
"It was a well thought-out package and the scheme seems to contain a very interesting concept. It is always a matter of finding the proper balances."
Knight admitted some more fine-tuning might be necessary, but said the general response from the board was very positive and he hoped to get a decision as early as August.
"Certainly the IOC were impressed by the work we have done on it and were very pleased with what we are doing with social equity tickets and the affordability for a lot of the Australians, but there is still a lot of work to do on the way the whole package hangs together," he said.
Knight said there was room for flexibility, but there would be no adverse impact on the cheap tickets. "The bottom end of the market is sacrosanct. There is no way we are going to say take $100 off an opening-ceremony ticket and put it on the social equity package. That's just not realistic.
"If we ended up with substantial cuts at the top end of the market then we would have to cut services in terms of the Games."
TWENTY-ONE of the 28 sports will be played on the first official day of competition at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
The opening ceremony will be held on Friday 15 September and
on-field action will begin officially the following day, although the soccer preliminaries will start two days earlier.
At least 11 sports will be contested every day until the Games end on 1 October.
Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates said there would be 296 events on the Sydney schedule - 166 for men, 118 for women and 12 mixed events.
COMPETITORS at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur will not be stripped of their medals if they test positive for marijuana.
"We are not interested in marijuana because it isn't a restricted drug in any of the Commonwealth sports, so we don't take any notice of it. It's not an issue," Dr Geoffrey Haigh, honorary medical adviser for the Commonwealth Games Federation, said in Vancouver yesterday.
Asked if a competitor who tested positive for marijuana would be stripped of their medal, Haigh said: "No. Never was."
Marijuana became an issue at this year's Winter Olympics when traces of the drug were found in Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati's urine sample.
The IOC stripped him of the gold medal he won in the men's giant slalom, but the decision was later overturned and the medal reinstated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which ruled there was no clear provision for marijuana testing at the Olympic Games.
Embarrassed by the fiasco, IOC officials said marijuana would be added to the banned list.
Haigh said the Commonwealth Games Federation followed IOC rules, but to date marijuana had not officially been named as a banned substance.
