London 2012 tickets sell quickly

Tickets only remained for five sports - football, volleyball, wrestling, weightlifting and boxing - after sports fans besieged the London 2012 website.

Athletics, basketball, handball, judo and rowing were among the sports that sold out. Organisers say they are unable to put a figure on how many ticket applications there have been but when confirmations are issued - probably before Sunday - it may be that more than half a million tickets were snapped up.

The London 2012 computer system struggled to cope with the demand when the sales window opened at 6am on Friday. Many people who had risen early to try to get the best tickets failed to get their online applications to go through.

Instead they were directed to a webpage saying: "We are experiencing high demand. You will be automatically directed to the page requested as soon as it becomes available. Thank you for your patience.''

Even some who got to the stage of requesting tickets and providing their bank card details were then told: "Sorry we cannot process your request please try again later.''

A London 2012 spokeswoman said: "We had an initial slowdown when a lot of people were held out of the system but after that people went through it pretty steadily.

"The system did not crash - due to high demand some people were being held outside the system.''

Some 2.3million Olympics tickets went up for sale and the 1.2million people who missed out completely in the first round of sales - almost two-thirds of the number who applied - were given the first opportunity in the second round. Of the total tickets remaining, 1.7million were for men's and women's Olympic football matches.

Organisers had been confident the system could cope with the demand, though unlike the first round of sales this was on a first-come, first-served basis so the pressure was greater. Kazinform cites Xinhua. See www.xinhuanet.com for full version