Great Britain’s "stunning success at the Rio Olympics has been credited with inspiring more than a million people to apply for tickets" for next year’s athletics World Championships in London, according to Ben Rumsby of the London TELEGRAPH. Organizers of the IAAF's "flagship event" declared the '17 edition was "on course to become the first in history to sell out" after almost half a million tickets were bought during last month’s ballot. The initial sales period coincided with the Olympics, during which Team GB delivered "what is widely regarded" as its "greatest ever performance at a Games" by bringing home 67 Medals. London 2017 CEO Niels de Vos, who is also CEO of UK Athletics, confirmed on Thursday that Britain’s gold rush produced a "spike" in demand for tickets for sport’s next major global event, with 1,047,000 applied for and six of the 14 sessions "oversubscribed." He said, "Yes, there was a spike, that’s clear. The last few days were the busiest days. In fact, the last day was as busy as the first day. Clearly, the Olympics is going to have had a big effect and that’s why we’ve done it the way we’ve done it." As of Thursday night, 486,000 of the 700,000 available tickets had been sold, "with successful applicants being informed from Friday." He added, "I’m pretty confident that we’ll be certainly very, very close to if not sold out for every session, which would be extraordinary. It’s never happened before for a World Athletics Championships" (TELEGRAPH, 9/1).
