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Ron Judd's Olympics Insider

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May 14, 2009 at 11:09 AM

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Tell us about your CoSport experience

Posted by Ron Judd


1:35 p.m.: Two choices:

Preliminary rounds hockey, or preliminary rounds hockey.

Although that women's bronze medal hockey game is still available.

1:18: A find: Women's bronze medal hockey game on Feb. 25: $202 and $269. Remember Turin: This was Team USA's last game.

Curling: Down to a single session. UPDATE: SOLD OUT.

------------

1:15: I see below that some of you got lucky, many did not. I feel all that pain. Looks like CoSport is getting down to the proverbial stems and seeds. Remaining hockey tickets are mostly now all the higher-price category, $188. But frankly, we're surprised they're still available. And the Web site now seems to be responding more readily with reduced traffic (YMMV).
---------------

Want to see the Olympics? Three words: Curling, women's qualifying. They're $88, while they last.

1:07: Long track speedskating gone, which means someone paid $249 to watch prelims in team pursuit...

1 p.m.:

-- Women's freestyle skiing sold out, except for aerial final at $202. Might be last medal-round ticket available. Oops. Never mind. SOLD OUT.

-- Curling going fast.

-- Ice hockey prelims still available.

-- Some long-track speed skating, going fast.

-- Closing ceremonies, $632 and $930. C'mon. Anne Murray might be there. Alanis. k.d. lang?

12:57 pm.: Less than 30 minutes after sale begins, looks like tickets available at this instant only for following:

-- Closing Ceremony.

-- Various rounds of curling.

-- Prelim hockey.

-- Women's freestyle aerials and ski cross.

-- Long track speedskate team pursuit qualifier.

-- Ice dance in priciest category, $500-plus.


12:51: Closing ceremony tickets still available...

Men's bronze medal curling match: $135. Hey, it's a medal round!

Some ice dancing seats at $535 per.

Also: Women's ski cross final at $168 and women's aerial final at $202.

Speed skating team pursuit qualifying: $249.

12:50 Update:
These tickets are going really,. really fast. And the Web site is holding up. As of now, some prelim hockey and curling, surprisingly, seem to be most of what's left.


12:45:Men's bronze medal hockey game: $538. Anyone? Anyone?

Short track: Sold out.
Long track: Sold out.
Bobsled: Sold out.
Biathlon: Sold out.
Cross-country: Women's 30k mass start, otherwise sold out.
Curling: Available.
Figure skating: Sold out, except expensive ice dance.
Freestyle skiing: Sold out.
Hockey: Available.
Luge: Sold out.
Nordic combined: sold out.
Opening ceremony: sold out.
Skeleton: Sold out.
Snowboard: Some available at $168.
Victory ceremonies, BC Place and Whistler: Sold out.

12:35: Tickets purchased! For the 50k mass start cross country race.

Note: If, like me, you race through the purchase process to get tickets before everything crashes, remember to click the box to "include shipping with the order" on the first checkout screen. It's ridiculously overpriced ($35 in other rounds) to have the tickets mailed, but otherwise you will have to wait in a will-call line in Vancouver next February.

Tickets appear to be available, as promised, for a fairly broad number of events, but of course the lower-priced seats are going very quickly, leaving tickets for the big-budgeted only -- already. Surprising numbers of hockey games, preliminary rounds. Starting price: $108.

12:28: TIckets still available for opening ceremony at $1,294 each. Go get 'em.


12:20 update: I'm in the site. Looks like small inventory for some events. Don't click on figure skating if you don't want to be in on-hold purgatory....

If you want tickets to just ANY Olympic event, go to skeleton, or ski jumping, or somesuch. Looks like you can get through there, eventually.

Scratch that. Ski jumping: Sold out. Women's curling qualifying, anyone? 88 bucks!

12:15 update: Icon spin continues, site won't load. Here is what Mark Lewis, president of Jet Set Sports, which owns and operates CoSport, told me last week about steps taken to avoid an Internet overload, like the one that happened in a previous ticket sale in February:

"We've worked with a new web-hosting and commerce company. We've done a lot of stress testing on the system. We think it'll hold up to the demand we're expecting. But there's always a finite number (at which point a system bogs down). Were confident we've enhanced our system."

"The last time, it was actually the credit-card purchasing portion that got gummed up. People got through the site OK, but couldn't get approval from the credit-card company. Everything started backing up (from there."

"There's always going to be a number that knocks you down. But it's been stress-tested. We're ready to go."

He said it was "hard to say" how long the ticket sale might last, but added that he would be surprised if all the tickets would be sold in one day.

"I think we will see a strong demand up front," he said. "A good number will be sold on the first day."

---------------
UPDATE: (Noon). In my version of Windows, the time-wasting, Web-page-not-loading icon is a little spinning circle, which spins clockwise. What's yours?

It's really pretty hypnotic.

----------
People logging on to www.cosport.com in search of Olympic tickets at 11 a.m. PDT were greeted by a site-maintenance placeholder, with the promise of a ticket sale to start at 11:30. Let us know how it goes, folks.

Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company

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Blog roll and links

www.olympic.org: The official International Olympic Committtee site, with news releases, a searchable Olympic medals database and other archival information.
www.nbcolympics.com: Olympic news site from one of the Games' primary sponsors.
NBC Olympics columnist Alan Abrahamson's column/blog
Chicago Tribune Olympic sports writer Philip Hersh's blog
www.usolympicteam.com: U.S. Olympic Committee's athlete web site.
www.aroundtherings.com: Ed and Sheila Hula's Olympic News Service (subscription).
www.wcsn.com: News service with audio, video and text coverage of Olympic sports, during and between Olympics. Free, but charges for live video feed subscriptions.
www.beijing2008.com: Beijing Organizing Committee Web site.
www.vancouver2010.com: Vancouver Organizing Committee's 2010 Winter Games site.
www.london2012.com: London 2012 Summer Games site.
www.sochi2014.com: Sochi, Russia's 2014 Winter Games site.
www.chicago2016.org: Candidate city Chicago's summer 2016 bid committee site.
Olympic swimmer Tara Kirk's highly entertaining WCSN blog
Bellevue Olympian Scott Macartney's WCSN alpine ski-racing blog
Other WCSN Olympic athlete blogs.