Laurie Denton, who is the grandfather of a swimmer hoping to compete in the Olympics next year, has claimed that the public must contact Hunt after it emerged that athletes competing in the pool will only be able to purchase one ticket for a family member at the 17,000 capacity Aquatics Centre at the Olympic Park in Stratford.

Earlier this year Australia's triple Olympic gold medallist Stephanie Rice claimed it was "unfair" that the swimmers got such a small allocation, a situation which left her with the prospect of having to choose between her parents, her sister and boyfriend Quade Cooper, the Australian rugby star, as to who would be able to watch her in action in London. 

"I don't know how it is fair that the likes of [FIFA President] Sepp Blatter gets the best Olympic tickets in the house while the family members of athletes, who put in endless hours of time and huge amounts of money to make sure their children get to the top level, get nothing," said Denton, who has refused to identify which swimmer he is the grandfather of for fear of her being victimised as a result of his campaign. 

"All competitors should have the right to be able to purchase more than one ticket so that their family support team can see them on the biggest day of their life and I urge everyone to write to Jeremy Hunt to see if he can intervene in what London 2012 is doing as they have clearly ignored all rational calls from the public.

"It is not so much about the grandparents like me, but surely both the mums and dads deserve to be there.

"All they want is to support their daughter or son at the biggest event of their young lives.

"Is this too much to ask?"

The petition comes following the news that over half of the amount of people who applied for tickets to the London 2012 Olympic Games did not receive any in the controversial random ballot to decide where they are allocated.

Around 1.8 million people applied for the 6.6 million public tickets available for the Olympics but about 55 per cent of applicants missed out meaning just short of one million people failed in their bid to secure tickets.

It has emerged that there was an overwhelming demand for cheaper tickets, which meant that those seats were oversubscribed many times over for most events, but London 2012 have defended the ballot system, which has been criticised for a lack of transparency over the method of allocation.

"Lots of people applied for the same thing," said a London 2012 spokesperson.

"Lots of people applied for tickets for £20 ($33) and under.

"We still think the ballot was the fairest way to do it."

All applicants who missed out on getting a ticket will receive priority in second draw, which will be a first-come first-served basis at the end of this month, although virtually all of the tickets for the more popular sports have already gone.

However, even those who were successful only received an average of five to 10 percent of the tickets they had requested.

They will be contacted by June 24 and told which seats they have secured as, while people may tell from bank statements whether they have obtained some tickets, many who applied have been left largely in the dark about which event they will be going to.

The 6.6 million tickets available to the public make up around 75 per cent of all the tickets available for the Olympics with the rest having been reserved for sponsors, media, international sports federations, overseas sales, National Olympic Committees, International Olympic Committee (IOC) members and other VIPs.

Meanwhile, due to the problems with the London 2012 policy of selling tickets, many British sports fans have swamped to websites selling official Olympic tickets in Germany, Denmark and other European countries.

Under EU law, other countries have to allow British sales but the German ticket reseller, Dertours.de, suffered a computer crash after being inundated with British demand and Denmark, which had only a small number of tickets for sale, suspended its sales due to the weight of British interest.

Hunt can be contacted at [email protected].

You can contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


Related stories
June 2011: Triple Olympic champion and London Mayor among 250,000 fans to miss out on 2012 tickets
May 2011: More than million people apply to watch Olympic 100 metres final
May 2011: Schools urged to claim London 2012 tickets by Coe and Johnson
May 2011: Tom Degun - The price is right for London 2012 Paralympic tickets
May 2011: Chance to watch London 2012 for £10 or less