Culture @ the Olympics: Issues, Trends and Perspectives, Edited by Andy Miah & Beatriz Garcia » Torino 2006

Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games

admin — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:27:27 +0000

Empty Stadia but Lots of Passion

admin — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 10:13:00 +0000

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.

Torino 2006

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 21:33:00 +0000

The cauldren is about to be lit here in Torino. The city squares are full of people watching big tv screens and the final arrangements to the city are over. The Olympic Truce moment in the Opening Ceremony was spectacular, creative and poignant. Beatriz and I are now in the Media Centre among around 30 other journalists. The city has become progressively busy today, though still no major queues around ticket offices.

We learned that the medals plaza will be open to non-residents and that 400 tickets will be available each night for those who try to obtain them.

A couple of nights ago, we saw the dress rehearsal of the opening ceremony, but they didnt include the amazing ferrari moment. The red lookof the city is in clear coordination with the TOROC look of the Games. There seems to be a good collaborative branding to both elements and the Cultural Olympiad has a strong, subtle and stylish presence around the city.

Tickets were hard to obtain today. The website was unavailble for some time and although cheapest options were shown available, it was not possible to select them. WE eventually accessed some from the ticket office near Medal Plaza where a very small queue had formed. Typically, each customer took around 20mins to serve as they had to pick which days they wanted to visit venues.Not simple.