OLYMPICS SUFFERING SAME TICKET SNAFUS AS ROCKIES: The Colorado Rockies’ World Series ascension was soured by a sinister online selling snafu. But SbBer Mark learns that they are not alone in tackling ticket terrors:

The INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE sends us news of Beijing’s breakdown of online ticket sales for the upcoming 2008 Games.Just like the Rockies’ sale, overwhelming demand caused the Olympic committee’s computer servers to crash on Tuesday. Within the first hour alone, the site received over 8 million hits, with more than 200,000 ticket requests coming in per second.

Unlike the Rockies’ 50,000 seats, the Olympic orders had 1.85 million tix available for purchase, all on a first-come, first-served basis.Further contrary to the Colorado crash, tickets were also for sale at various Bank of China branches throughout the country. Rockies stubs were only offered online.

But again similar to the Rockies ruckus, even bank sales were stopped by the computer snafu. And of the 2 million callers trying to get through on the telephone helpline, many were greeted with a busy signal.

Like most Chinese government agencies, the Olympic ticketing department was refusing to comment on the situation. That’s a little hard for hopeful buyers to swallow, much like the Beijing air.