Blogs were buzzing over the weekend, as successful Olympic ticket applicants crowed over their prizes.

"Got Canada v. USA mens hockey tickets and I could not be any happier!" said one.

"We filled in some gaps in our Olympic tickets....The BIGGEST pickup is certainly the Canada vs. USA preliminary round hockey game," wrote Toronto blogger Todd Warnell.

Trumpeted Steph, another happy customer: "I'm going to the Olympics!" She managed to order tickets for two Canadian hockey matches, the women against Sweden and the men's preliminary contest against Switzerland. "This is honestly one of my biggest dreams come true! I'm so excited, I haven't stopped smiling all day, and I can't possibly sit still!"

But there were no smiles on many other faces. Hundreds of thousands of hopefuls also looking for good tickets wound up being shunted into a "virtual waiting room" for up two hours or more. When they finally made it to VANOC's official ticket site, there was little left, beyond preliminary curling rounds and preliminary men's and women's hockey games involving countries other than Canada.

The occasion was a huge public offering of 200,000 Olympic tickets, including more than a thousand for the most highly sought Games event, the gold medal men's hockey final. Those were snapped up within minutes of the opening of the online ticket site.

By noon, two hours after the sale opening, VANOC's ticketing website had received more than five million page views, at a rate of 1,300 hits per second in the early going.

All told, 22,000 successful orders were placed for more than 130,000 tickets in the offering's first four hours.

"The level of interest was extraordinary," VANOC spokesman Chris Brumwell said. "Overall, everyone is extremely pleased with how sales have gone so far."

He said VANOC received only "minimal" complaints about the way tickets were sold, and those who ran into problems have been instructed to contact the Olympic call centre.

Meanwhile, all is not lost for disgruntled Olympic ticket applicants who lost out in the weekend's online stampede.
As of late yesterday, hockey fans could still buy tickets for all games involving the Latvian men's team, including a highly anticipated showdown with Slovakia. Tickets also remained for the Finland-Belarus match.

On the women's hockey side, some playoff tickets were not sold out, nor was the Feb. 17 tilt between Slovakia and Switzerland.

Tens of thousands of tickets also remain for the nightly victory ceremonies at $22 each, and Paralympic tickets went back on sale yesterday.

VANOC will offer a third and final offering in the fall, although it will be much smaller than the past weekend's gold rush.