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Olympic Tickets: Which Sports Should I See? Unless you're going to spend the full 17 days hanging around the Olympics and have sacks full of money to pay to see an event or two each day, you're going to have to make some choices—and even if you do have several grand to drop on tix, so many events happen simultaneously, you'll still have to pick your faves.
PERSONALLY, I'd rather not pay $59 to stand at a random curve of the bobsleigh run where I can see neither the starting push nor the finishing line. After two or three whooshes! of teams hurtling past, the excitement will have worn off. Same goes for any sport where you can't watch them do loopy-loops in the air, triple axels (or hat tricks) on the ice, or witness the winners cross that finish line. Bobsleigh (and its slippy-slide cousins luge and skeleton) are, to me, best watched on TV—or from a $67 "Category A" seat near the end of the track. (All events sell at least the fair-to-middlin' "Category B" seats and the twice-as-pricey "Category A" ones right near center ice or that finish line; for some events, you can save even more by getting "Category C," the Olympic equivalent of nosebleed seats.) Another factor to consider: if time and ticket-money are tight, would you rather see a qualifying round of some popular event for which the important final races and medals matches are already sold out, or would you prefer the excitement of seeing a team win gold, even if it's not one of those sexier sports that gets all the press? Me, I'd probably do a bit of both: watch a round or two of Alpine skiing and such, but also save time (and funds) to spend on the gold medal match in curling. Why curling? Well, frankly, because you can still get tickets to the final games. People chuckle a bit at curling, because, let's face, it, on TV it looks a bit like bowling on quaaludes, the only ice-bound game where the players don't even wear skates and where the only real burst of physical activity appears to be a display of rapid janitorial skills using a teensy push broom. Take it from someone who's thrown a few stones on the ice, it is (a) a heck of a lot harder than it looks, and (b) a whole lot more fun (even before you get to the beer-drinking that traditionally follows every match). But the sport's relative unpopularity also means you can still get primo seats—and that gold medal match is still wide open, and ticket start at a mere $67. Heck, I might even fork over the $118 for a Category A seat on that one.
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