Johnson and Wiggins miss out on Olympic tickets

As many as 250,000 people been left without tickets to the London 2012 Olympics after yesterday's first ballot, and among them are some high-profile names who have helped organise the games and even some who could be participating in them.
 
All the money debited from the accounts of successful applicants was due to have been taken by midnight on Tuesday meaning that anyone left without a dent in their bank balance has missed out.
 
London mayor Boris Johnson is one of those left without any tickets and he, like many others, has announced that he is feeling "massively disappointed and cheesed off".
 
But he refused to criticise the arbitrary nature of the draw, which saw 20 million applications for 6.6 million tickets from 1.8 million people.
 
"I am proud to be British. No other country or culture in the world would have a situation where the mayor of the host city goes into a ballot for tickets for his family and gets rejected," said Johnson, before suggesting that he might have been singled out.

"I suspect Locog has done this deliberately to cheer up everyone else," he moaned. "Obviously people are disappointed, like me, but they will all have another chance, like me."
 
He said he would reapply in July for the second batch of tickets.
 
The minister for culture and sport, Jeremy Hunt, also said that his account had not been debited, meaning that he, too, had not been successful in the ballot.
 
There was also bad news for cyclist Bradley Wiggins, who could well be part of the Team GB team next summer. He announced his bad luck on Twitter, and said: "No Olympic tickets for the wife and kids to watch Team Pursuit, oh well sorry kids going to have to watch dad on the telly!"
 
He had sympathy from fellow cyclist Chris Boardman, who won a gold at the 1992 Olympics. He missed out as well and responded to Wiggins's tweet by saying: "Same here, nada."
 
Others were mystified by their failure to secure seats. Cricket blogger Daniel Norcross commented: "Drat. No tickets for Olympics despite choosing Water Polo. How many people can possibly want to see Water Polo?"
 
The ire of those who missed out will not have been soothed by the gloating of those who did win. Among them was DJ Richard Bacon, whose luck has improved since he was sacked as a presenter of Blue Peter for taking cocaine. He Tweeted: "Whoops. £3K has been taken out of my account for Olympics tickets. Bloody hell. Thought they were meant to be hard to get. That backfired."

Back to Boris. There is one way to be sure of attending the games – win the mayoral election next May, two months before the games start. As for sports minister Hunt, make sure you're not reshuffled. Both men can expect to get one or two of the 9,000 tickets set aside for government officials and dignitaries. ·