From fire to ice, nothing seems to be going right at the Winter Olympics.
First the torch malfunctioned, then warm weather turned the slopes - and the schedule - to slush, and now tickets are being cancelled because of safety concerns.
By Tuesday, the Glitch Games were in full swing: 20,000 standing-room tickets for the snowboarding venue were voided because fans had fallen between the bales of hay under the melting layers of trucked-in snow.
Want to take a picture of the Olympic cauldron? Make sure that camera is pressed up against the chain-link fence - provided there's room to squeeze in and a Vancouver 2010 banner isn't in the way.
Organisers are expected to unveil a plan to address the rising public outcry and bring people closer to the flame, the most distinguished and enduring symbol of any Olympics.
"Perhaps," conceded Renee Smith-Valade, a spokeswoman for the organising committee, "we did underestimate the degree to which people would want to get close to it."
'Ratty-looking prison camp fence'
Perhaps. At a news conference, a Canadian TV reporter asked organisers why the flame was hidden behind "a ratty-looking prison camp fence".
And the Globe and Mail newspaper chose to allude to another Olympic city - Berlin.
Addressing the head of the Vancouver Games, the paper cried: "Mr. Furlong, tear down this fence!"
Of course, no scheduling or logistics issue - or sporting event, for that matter - seems significant in light of the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili on the first day of the
Olympics.
And, to be fair, there have been bright spots. Moguls skier Alexandre Bilodeau gave Canada its first gold medal in three home Olympics. NHL superstar Sidney Crosby has the Canadian men's hockey team looking for gold. TV ratings have been strong.
But aside from that, it's been one problem after another for a Games governed not so much by the Olympic creed as by Murphy's Law - shades of Atlanta in 1996.
'Embarrassing incompetence'
The cancelled tickets at Cypress Mountain - 28,000 in all - mean about $US1.5 million ($AU1.66 million) in lost revenue for the Games, and disappointment for the snowboarding fans.
Athletes weren't spared, either. Timing foulups marred both biathlon events on Tuesday.
"It is embarrassing," said Norbert Baier, the International Biathlon Union's technical delegate. "Why do we have this incompetence?"
The events schedule, meanwhile, looks like it's been run over by a bobsled.
On Tuesday alone, the men's super-combined, up in the mountains at Whistler, was postponed because of an overnight snowstorm.
The snowboard cross finals were rescheduled. Women's downhill training was cancelled.
This after downhill training was postponed repeatedly earlier in the Olympics because of wet weather that messed with the snow.
Speedskating rink ruined
It's been so mild that locals have jokingly called it the Vancouver Summer Olympics.
Indoors, there are the ice escapades.
At the Richmond Oval, the speedskating venue, the resurfacing machine went on the blink Monday. Instead of a track as smooth as glass, it left piles of slush and pools of water.
So the Olympics, which has a sponsorship deal with Olympia ice resurfacers, had to call in a different brand for replacement - a Zamboni, from a whole province over in Calgary.
Vancouver organisers say they're responding as best they can to problems mostly out of their control.
"It's a little like losing your luggage," Smith-Valade said at a news conference where she was bombarded by questions about all that's gone wrong. "It's not whether the luggage gets lost - it's how you deal with it."
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