Tickets to see Usain Bolt's likely bid for glory in the Olympic 100-meters final are among more than one million which remain unsold for the Rio de Janeiro Games, a spokesman said Wednesday. With two days to go to Friday's opening ceremony, tickets are still up for grabs for both the 100m and 200m finals, where Jamaican superstar Bolt will try to make history by winning both titles, along with the 4x100m relay, for the third straight Olympics.
That is a stark contrast with the London Games in 2012, when tickets for the most popular events were sold out several months in advance. In all, some 1.2 million tickets - around 20 percent of the total - are still available in Brazil. "We have sold 4.9 million tickets, about 80 percent" of the total, a spokesman for the Rio 2016 organising committee told AFP. The expensive seats have been hardest to sell for South America's first Olympics.
The cheap tickets to see Bolt are all sold out, but last-minute fans can still get in for 380 reals to 1,200 reals ($115 to $370). It's the same story for the women's 100m and 200m finals. Tickets are also available for the opening ceremony in Rio's legendary Maracana Stadium - though those will set you back $925 to $1,420. The sporting events kicked off Wednesday with the women's football tournament, as Sweden downed South Africa 1-0 before a sea of empty seats. There were 37,000 people in attendance at the 60,000-seat stadium, the spokesman said. Sales were better for the next match, when Brazil beat China 3-0.