by Harry Papachristou
ATHENS, Aug 8 (AFP) - After a snail's pace start, Olympic ticket sales put on a burst of speed Sunday into the final straight before the Games open as long lines of would-be spectators waited outside ticket booths in Athens to make a last-minute purchase.
"I decided to go watch the Games, but, just like Greeks do, I'm buying tickets at the last minute," said Costas Hamos, a middle-aged transport company owner from Athens, one of around 100 Greeks who lined up in front of a ticket sales booth in central Athens.
"I had already bought a few tickets and I'm back for more," said Panayiotis Pavlakis, a 19-year-old student.
Since Monday, Games organisers ATHOC have been announcing new daily ticket sales records every 24 hours. More than 54,000 tickets were sold on Friday, a huge rise from the 4,500 that were sold daily in June.
The last-minute surge has helped to dispel fears that the Games could take place in half-empty stadiums. Only 2.2 million out of a total 5.3 million tickets had been sold by August 3, 10 days before the Games' opening ceremony.
Between the middle of May and mid-June, tickets could be booked online and then either picked up at ticket booths when they opened or be sent to the purchasers' homes. But computer-shy Greeks shunned that option.
"I surf on the web frequently, but I didn't bother to book tickets from there," said Pavlakis.
Some sports fans had planned ahead but then saw their plans to attend their chosen event dashed.
"I bought tickets for the August 15 basketball game between Greece and the Dream Team," a stewardess on Greece's national carrier, Olympic Airways, told AFP.
"But then the airline told me I'd be in New York on that day, so I'm going to have to give away the tickets."
ATHOC spokesman Michalis Zaharatos has said Athens could repeat Sydney's 2000 performance, where one million tickets were sold during the Games.
In the last few days before the Games, new ticket booths were popping up all over the city, and a ticket black market has materialised -- a clear indicator, some observers said, that demand is finally on the rise.
Ads in Athens freesheets offered tickets for sold-out Olympic events, such as the Games' opening and closing ceremonies and the athletics finals.
"Anybody interested in swimming tickets?" a man shouted at hopeful purchasers waiting in line Sunday.
Organisers have also begun a massive advertising campaign to boost ticket sales. It shows the Greek national football team's stunning success in this summer's European football championships and urges Greeks to go to the Games to experience "new moments of glory".
With more than 400 athletes, Greece is fielding the biggest Olympic team in its history, and hopes to at least equal its tally of 13 medals at the 2000 Sydney Games.
"I want athletics tickets. If they tell me there are only some for 200 euros left, I'll buy them," said engineer Andreas Charalambopoulos as he waited in line.
Others were waiting for what Greeks consider more esoteric sports.
"I came to buy baseball tickets. They're not expensive and baseball is such a strange sport -- I just want to see what it looks like," Pavlakis said.
Athenians anxious for a ticket still had to square off with old-fashioned Greek disorganisation.
Would-be spectators outside the booth on Korais Square in central Athens were left waiting for two hours in the sweltering sun because sales managers had failed to inform the public that the booths opened at noon on Sunday -- two hours later than during the week.
By mid-afternoon, a long line was still snaking around the pavement outside the ticket booth in front of the 1896 Olympic stadium.
The Olympic Airways air hostess said that out of a sense of historic duty she planned to buy additional tickets for an event on a day she is certain to be in Athens.
"If I don't, what will I say to my children one day? That the Olympic Games were in Athens in I didn't go?," she said.
"I'd be ashamed."