Just a thought, but teams will be based around SE England at Pre-Games Training Camps in the weeks before the Olympics. For example, Rwanda will be at the sports centre in Bury St Edmunds, not far from Cambridge. I understand there will be several other training camps in the Cambridge area. I don't know what the rules are for spectators, but it's worth checking out. :-)

Heimdall, thanks for that suggestion. That could be very interesting.

Another query:

The London 2012 Ticketing "rules" are geared to prevent ticket scalping (which I am the head evangelist for). They have the ticket resale going on in January/February. But it seems like it would be a really normal thing to have tickets to an event that you can no longer go to at the last minute that you want to have a relative/friend/colleague use. Or that who may be interested in seeing the event has changed due to who made the SemiFinals/Finals, etc. Does anyone know how this is being handled?

With the team sports, we don't even know who qualified for the Olympics yet, and in which group they will be playing, so you can order tickets for one of the preliminary rounds, but don't know who will be playing. I suppose that many fans are holding tickets for a preliminary round, that they will not want if their country is not playing.

Will they allow people to swap tickets? I have tickets for a semi-final hockey; but there will be 2 semi-finals. What if I want to see the other one, and can swap tickets with someone who has those tickets? Since tickets are by name, that would not be allowed?

And resale starts from January 6. This is what the mail said:

Keep checking the ticketing website as tickets may be released for purchase during the ticket resale period. All tickets will be sold on a first come, first served basis. Please note: tickets will only be released if put up for resale by another ticketholder.

1. Tickets don't appear to be "by name". For each purchase there's a ticketholder, and a fair amount of security around that person. But each ticket isn't named. The rules then (http://www.tickets.london2012.com/purchaseterms.html) go:
- if more than one Ticket is issued to a Purchaser, those Tickets may only be used by the Purchaser and a family member, friend or colleague who is known to the Purchaser personally and who is intended to accompany the Purchaser to a Session. The transfer of a Ticket in this manner shall not contravene clauses 17.1 and 17.2 PROVIDED THAT: .....

There's a fair amount about how transfer mustn't be for profit, and tickets can't be resold except to the LOCOG resale system, and attendees are liable to be asked hteir name & address. But a temporary free loan to a friend looks just fine

2. Remember: not everything's sold. Apart from football and the Paralympics, and the Jan 6 resale event, there's another public sale in 2012 (I assume of foreign-allocated tickets that haven't sold), at least in the UK.

3." I almost fainted when I first saw London prices. ". You're right. The Bronze Medal football match at Old Trafford will have the third and fourth best teams in the world in the world's most popular sport in the world's best known football stadium. Could be Brazil vs Germany; Argentina vs Italy. Quite possibly even UK vs France (admittedly unlikely,that one, though).

£30 for an event that's never happened before and won't happen again in the lifetime of anyone on this forum.

Best value sporting ticket this century.

Not quite. Men's football is an under 23 event, with three oldtimers per team allowed.

http://www.london2012.com/football

"David Beckham could be among the players with a choice to make after England's Football Association said players picked for the 2012 European Championship will not be selected for the London Olympic team."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...e3ccf9ce03497a