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Over 59,000 tickets sold for Sunday’s Olympic events in Sochi

Besides the traditionally popular in Russia figure skating, other Olympic events, which included the new Olympic discipline of slopestyle, also attracted numerous spectators on Sunday

© EPA/BARBARA WALTON

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SOCHI, February 10. /ITAR-TASS/. Over 59,000 tickets were sold solely for Sunday’s Olympic competitions, when the 2014 Winter Games in Russia’s Sochi entered their second day of the two-week marathon, a vice-president of the Olympics organizing committee said on Monday.

“We had sold 59,395 tickets to the events, which took place on Sunday,” Alexandra Kosterina, a vice president of the Sochi-2014 organizing committee in charge of communications, said. “At most events, arenas were practically full packed, while tickets for figure skating and luge were sold out.”

A total of eight sets of medals were up for grabs in Sunday competitions, which included the finals of the team figure skating and luge in men’s singles. The team figure skating competition, which brought Russia its first Olympic gold at the current Winter Games, saw the Iceberg Skating Palace packed with spectators including President Vladimir Putin as well as many prominent international and domestic celebrities and athletes.

According to Kosterina, besides the traditionally popular in Russia figure skating other Olympic events, which included the new Olympic discipline of slopestyle, also attracted numerous spectators on Sunday.

“Great interest was for women’s [snowboard] slopestyle,” she told a news conference.

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“We were surprised at the interest to women’s ice hockey,” she said. “We thought Russian fans would be interested only in the match against Germany, but they also chose to attend the competition, where the Swedish team played.”

Irina Gladkikh, the sports director with the organizing committee, echoed Kosterina’s words about the high turnout of spectators at the Olympic competitions, including the recently introduced ones.

“There was no empty places left for spectators at the men’s snowboard slopestyle competition, while there were few left for the women’s [slopestyle] competition,” Gladkikh said adding that the organizing committee fully implements obligations of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to provide for spectators’ turnout at the Winter Games.

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