Sochi sells 92% of tickets for first day

The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics were at 81% capacity on day one, according to Games organisers.

Around 92% of tickets available had been sold for the competition which got properly under way on Saturday with events held both in the mountains and in the Olympic Park.

At a press briefing this morning, when asked about gaps at some of the venues, Sochi 2014 director of communications Alexandra Kosterina said: “Out of all of the tickets that were available for yesterday for all the competitions, we sold 92%.

“If we talk about the actual turn-out, it was about 81%. In terms of the attendance in the park, it was more than 30,000 people. If we talk about all the venues there were around 40,000 people.

“We had 501 athletes competing yesterday, we had 12 events, five of them were medal events and we had 11,033 volunteers in shifts.

“I think 92% sold is a really good figure, we are happy with that. We have seen pretty full stadia.”

Responding to a suggestion that the tight security which surrounds the Games in southern Russia had made some people late for the events, she said: “I think people are working out the logistics, working out the timing and how long it takes

to get to the venues.

“It is not an issue of security per se, but it is an issue of logistics. A lot of people need to understand what time they need to travel.

“We are certainly trying to alert people through different means of communications in terms of transport hubs and local media, just to tell them that they need to come in advance.

“And as Dmitry (Chernyshenko, president of the Sochi 2014 organising committee), said yesterday, yes, we have had some problems with Russian mentality in a lot of ways, in that Russians like to come to the event, not prior, but as close as possible and that is why indeed, we had an issue of a lot of spectators being late for the games.

“We are working on it, we trying to develop more communications with all means that we have and we are hoping that it will be improve.”