More para tickets to go on sale after session sells out
Extra paralympic tickets will go on sale in December after some sessions sold out in the initial sales round.
The London Games organisers, LOCOG, reported that across all 20 para sports, 1.14m tickets were applied for out of a possible 1.5m and at least 16 sessions were oversubscribed.
LOCOG could not say which para dressage sessions failed to sell out but confirmed that at least one of the 12 sessions had done so.
This seems more positive than the results of a recent H&H survey would imply, where 72% of the 903 respondents said they would not be applying for tickets.
Winnie Murphy of British Dressage said: “It can be difficult to entice people to watch a six-minute test that’s purely in walk. But even grand prix riders would find it difficult to pinpoint a perfect 10m circle or ride the exact number of steps in a movement asked of para riders.
“Once you change your terms of reference it seems quite different.”
It is also possible people may have been put off by the para dressage (30-August-4 September 2012) clash between the Burghley Horse Trials (30 August-2 September).
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A spokesman for the British Paralympic Association added: “This the first time that any sessions have sold out and had to be balloted for.”
There will be a ballot this week. A further 500,000 tickets, plus those unsold, will go on sale in December.
This news story was first published in the current issue of Horse & Hound (6 October, 2011)
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A self-confessed newshound, farmer’s daughter and journalist of many years' experience, Charlotte worked on regional papers before joining H&H in 2007. A regular rider, she visited Ireland in 2010 to investigate the fate of Irish horses through the recession, to much acclaim, and reported from the FEI General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro in 2011. She left Horse & Hound in March 2013.