Radcliffe

Grandstand tickets for Saturday, the final of the four-day GraceKennedy/ISSA Boys and Girls' Athletic Championships, were being sold by scalpers for almost twice their face value, outside the National Stadium ticket office yesterday.

Late yesterday afternoon, tickets which were being sold by the organisers for $1,600 were being offered, a short distance from where two policemen stood guarding the ticket office, for $3,000.

The last set of grandstand tickets for the final day were sold out yesterday as fans lined up from as early as before 7 a.m. to purchase the under 300 which were still available.

Tickets, even for the grandstand on the final day, are usually on sale as late as the third day of the four-day meet.

It appears, however, that this year, several schools purchased hundreds more than the usual number of tickets, which are made available to these institutions by the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association, prior to putting them on the market.

Explanation

Chairman of the organising committee for the championships, Glenmuir High principal Clement Radcliffe, yesterday sought to explain the reason for the scarcity of tickets for the grandstand on Saturday.

"Normally, we tell schools to order tickets in advance, both for themselves, which is complimentary, and for purchase. Frankly, when it was checked (recently), they were accessing far too many more than we had planned and we had to put a stop to that. So some of the tickets went out through that system early but it went to the schools," Radcliffe said.

According to Radcliffe, tickets (for the grandstand on Saturday) were on sale up to about 10 a.m. yesterday.

"Maybe 200 ... 300 at the ticket office because I went there and bought myself," Radcliffe added.

According to reports yesterday, large blocks of final-day tickets for premium areas of the grandstand (those areas close to the finish line) were sold out long before the tickets were made available to the public.

The grandstand has a capacity of approximately 4,950, but fewer than 4,000 tickets were sold as the others were made available to sponsors. As many as 24,000 bleachers tickets are available for Saturday.

elton.tucker@gleanerjm.com