Olympic ticket sales a nightmare

"I call upon the Greek public to come to the venues and to cheer for their teams and to cheer for the other teams," IOC president Jacques Rogge said Monday after a tour of the main Olympic complex with chief organizer Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki.

Premier Costas Caramanlis also urged Greeks to fill stadiums.

"Every Greek should have a live memory of this celebration and be present at this historic occasion," Caramanlis said in a televised address carried live on state-run and private stations.

"The time has come to cheer for the athletes."

Preparations by Athens dragged after the IOC awarded the games to Greece in 1997. IOC officials worried when construction ran behind schedule.

But Rogge was decidedly more optimistic this week, noting that that the IOC "has always expressed its confidence that our Greek friends would complete the preparations in due time."

The delays are being blamed for sluggish ticket sales, with just slightly less than half of the 5.3 million tickets still unsold. Organizers hope to sell 3.4 million before Friday・?s opening ceremony, but last week, only 284,000 were purchased.

DOPING NEWS: Four days before the start of the Athens Games, several athletes had their Olympic plans changed because of drug-test results.

-- Two players on the Greek Olympic baseball team, U.S.-born Andrew James Brack and Derek Nicholson, tested positive for banned substances and were thrown off the team Monday.

-- Australian cyclist Jobie Dajka lost an appeal before the Court of Arbitration for Sport and will not be riding in Athens. The Australian Olympic Committee left him off the team because he lied during an inquiry into drug use at an Australian training center.

-- The Swiss Olympic Association said cyclist Oscar Camenzind won・?t ride, either, after a July 22 sample showed traces of the banned endurance drug EPO.

-- Romanian rower Viorica Susanu was cleared to compete in the women・?s pairs competition after a second doping test. A previous test showed traces of the steroid metandienone, but Romania・?s anti-doping lab was unsure about the sample.

-- In Madrid, the Spanish Olympic Committee said Jovino Gonzalez tested positive for EPO.

Committee president Jose Maria Echevarria told newspaper El Mundo・?s Web site that Gonzalez, a member of the Olympic canoe team, tested positive for eritropoyetina. He said the athlete refused a second test and wouldn・?t be replaced.

-- Also Monday, Irish distance runner Cathal Lombard told a newspaper he took EPO and won・?t challenge the results of a drug test.

And the trainer for European women・?s 1,500-meter champion Sureyya Ayhan, who was considered a favorite in that race at the Olympics, said the runner didn・?t try to cheat on a doping test by using someone else・?s urine. Turkish authorities have said they launched an investigation into the allegations.

NOT THERE FOR NOMAR: The timing of Nomar Garciaparra・?s trade to the Chicago Cubs was awkward for his wife, U.S. soccer star Mia Hamm.

The Boston Red Sox traded Garciaparra the day before the U.S. team・?s final warmup game in Connecticut. Hamm and her teammates left the next day for Greece, giving her no time to see her husband during his unexpected career upheaval.

"It was hard, physically not being there," Hamm said after Monday・?s practice in Iraklion, Greece. "But in the end, we both get to do what we love to do. And we feel that support from each other, despite the distance.

"He played for Boston for eight years, eight wonderful years, and now he plays for another unbelievable organization, unbelievable city and fans. But in the end, he still gets to play. Same here."

Hamm said Garciaparra won・?t be coming to the Olympics because of baseball・?s schedule.

STALLION SLOWED: Show jumping gold medal favorite Marcus Ehning withdrew from the Olympics on Monday because his horse is still smarting from an injury earlier this year.

The German said his stallion, For Pleasure, has suffered from an irritating leg injury since a recent competition.

The 18-year-old For Pleasure has twice won Olympic team gold for Germany, with Lars Nieberg in Atlanta and with Ehning in Sydney.

Ehning is the top-ranked rider in the world this year, and his withdrawal is a blow for the German team. He・?ll be replaced by Marco Kutscher, riding Montender.

FRIED EEL: Eric the Eel・?s Olympic comeback hopes have short-circuited.

The swimmer, who hails from Equatorial Guinea, shot to global stardom during the Sydney 2000 Games when he struggled -- and nearly drowned -- to reach the end of a pool during a 100-meter freestyle swimming heat.

Even though he didn・?t medal, his pluck drew acclaim. He hoped to do better in Athens, but a bureaucratic blunder resulted in his passport photo being misplaced, Spanish sports newspaper Marca reported Monday.

Because of that, he won・?t be able to get to Athens in time for the race.

"It・?s the worst thing that has happened to me in four years. I was dying to go to the Olympics," he told the newspaper in Spain, where had been training, adding he had become "real swimmer" since then.

SLAVKOV QUITS: A senior Bulgarian sports official accused of Olympic misconduct intends to step down temporarily as head of the country・?s national Olympic committee and soccer federation and will sue the British Broadcasting Corp., his spokesman said Monday.

The move came two days after Ivan Slavkov was suspended as a member of the International Olympic Committee for alleged involvement in a bid city corruption scandal.

"Slavkov will first go on leave, and then will temporarily step down from his posts in the Olympic Committee and the Soccer Union," spokesman Atanas Karaivanov said from the capital, Sofia.

Slavkov was secretly filmed by an undercover BBC television crew discussing how votes could be bought in the bidding for the 2012 Summer Games. Karaivanov said Slavkov plans to sue the BBC, which didn・?t immediately comment.

The 64-year old Slavkov, who has led the national Olympic Committee since 1982 and became an IOC member in 1987, denied any wrongdoing and said he played along to expose what he thought was a real attempt to corrupt the process -- a defense rejected by the IOC ethics panel.