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Mother Of Irish Olympian Said She Had To Buy Tickets From Norwegian Website

Conor Neville
By Conor Neville
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At the London Olympics, the OCI appointed THG as the authorised reseller of Ireland's allocated tickets. This time around, the OCI appointed a Dublin based company called Pro10 as the authorised reseller of OCI tickets.

Despite this, tickets ended up in the hands of Kevin Mallon, a THG executive who Brazilian police say they caught "red handed" touting tickets in a Rio hotel.

Brazilian investigators have since told the BBC that they believe that Pro10 "was created as a means for acquiring tickets to be resold by THG." Their theory was that the company simply functioned as "a bridge" to enable tickets to get to THG.

Therefore, it was interesting to hear the testimony of Grainne Adams, the mother of Carlow sailor Finn Lynch, on her dealings with Pro10.

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Adams told Newstalk Breakfast she ultimately had to buy tickets to the Olympics opening ceremony from a Norwegian website.

I worked out that it was Pro10, I rang and rang and rang every day, several times a day, you'd just get straight through as if to voicemail and then it would say that voicemail was full.

I was getting a bit desperate. I googled Pro10 a lot and found  some person's name with a phone number.

I phoned them, said this is the trouble I'm having. The person I rang didn't have anything to do with the tickets or the Olympics, but he said let them know and they would get back to me. Which they did the next day and said that all of Ireland's tickets had sold out in January, they had a few tickets left for the athletics.

What I was looking for were tickets to the opening ceremony because sailing isn't the easiest sport to watch from the land. I had my heart set on watching Finn walking with the Irish team under the Irish flag.

By rights, she should have been able to receive tickets to the sailing events under the 'friends and family scheme' which held tickets for the parents of competitors. However, she was told that Pro10 didn't have tickets for her.

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She eventually procured tickets via a Norwegian website thanks her son's girlfriend who found two tickets at face value for the opening ceremony.

Note: Football fans might be keen to learn that one of Pro10's directors is Eamonn Collins, former St. Patrick's Athletic manager.

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Read more: 'The British Empire!' - Tory MP Hits Us With Silliest And Most Jingoistic Post-Olympics Tweet

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