Missed out on a ticket for London 2012? You've got one last shot

The Olympic Stadium is getting ready for the athletics (Evening Standard)

Up to 1,600 coveted tickets for athletics events are to be put on sale at the last minute.

Paul Deighton, chief executive of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog), said tickets had been held back until now so that views from certain seats were unrestricted. The news will be welcomed by fans who struggled to get tickets.

Mr Deighton said: "You sort of hold them back to make sure all the seats work and all the views are not restricted. So as we're seeing how every venue works we are releasing the final tickets.

"I think you can expect to see quite a few athletics tickets shortly because, of course, we converted the stadium from the 'green and pleasant land' that we had on Friday night into an athletics stadium – getting all the camera positions finally worked out so we can be precise about which seats have a view that is acceptable to sell and which ones are restricted. There will be a few of those coming shortly."

Mr Deighton suggested that between 1 per cent and 2 per cent of tickets had been held back. If 2 per cent of the Olympic Stadium's 80,000 seats are yet to go on sale, up to 1,600 could be up for grabs. More details about ticket availability will come forward in the next 48 hours, Locog said. It has faced criticism over the ranks of empty seats at "sold-out" events. Locog has tried to overcome the problem by selling tickets which were originally allocated to members of the "Olympic family", such as foreign sporting dignitaries and the media. About 9,000 reclaimed tickets from accredited seats have been sold over the past few days.