Olympics synchronised swimming fans left high and dry

Saho Harada and Emiko Suzuki of Japan compete in the Synchronised Swimming Duet Technical Routine event at the National Aquatics Center in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Photograph: ODA

Thousands of non-existent tickets have been sold by the Olympic authorities, it has emerged.

As many as 10,000 tickets to synchronised swimming were erroneously sold in the second round of ticket sales last June.

Human error was blamed for the blunder, and the Olympic organisers have promised to provide the holders of the tickets with entrance to other events from a pool of contingency tickets so far kept back from general sale.

A spokesperson for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) said: “As a result of finalising the seating configurations in our venues and reconciling the millions of Olympic and Paralympic ticket orders against the seating plans for around 1,000 sporting sessions, we have discovered an error in seats available in four synchronised swimming sessions.”

“In December we contacted around 3,000 customers who had applied for tickets in the four sessions during the second round sales process.

“We are exchanging their synchronised swimming tickets for tickets in other sports that they originally applied for.”

This is the latest in a ticket sales process that has been dogged by controversy over fairness and the cost of tickets.

It is particularly disconcerting for those lucky few who managed to buy tickets to find that they did not have seats at their games of choice.

It is believed, however, that most of those who had originally purchased synchronised swimming tickets and have now been offered entry to other events have accepted the offer.