Following the failure of the Olympic Ticketmaster site to cope with the rush for tickets last night, I was among many thousands of potential customers who discovered two things: the power of television, and the consequences of poor technical planning.

Like many others (it turned out) I left it till virtually the last minute to register for tickets for the 2012 Olympics. Obviously that isn’t the best time to register, but I felt sure that the organisers and their technical partner Ticketmaster had anticipated a late surge for tickets, and would have enough redundancy in their systems to cope. All was going swimmingly until the BBC news ran an item on the ticket deadline. Immediately, the website crashed, and the remainder of the process was painful. The site crashed repeatedly, sometimes gracefully with an apology message, but sometimes with a cryptic technical message. I persevered, because I knew that my bookings would probably be OK if I refreshed the page – but I do wonder how many people simply gave up, and will miss out on their tickets as a consequence.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a lot of anger today aimed at the organisers. No doubt they will point the finger at the public, saying we’re daft to leave booking to the last minute. Surely though, they could have foreseen this rush? Anyway, I got to the end of the process. All I have to do now is wait to see if I win the ticket lottery and get the chance to go, even if it’s to the qualifying rounds of the Greco-Roman wrestling!

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