There were about 2,500 empty seats for the Canada-Poland hockey game Sunday at the 19,000-seat Saddledome and 500 coveted seats were vacant for the first figure skating session Sunday night at the 9,000seat Corral.

Then OCO '88 fired its ticket manager, James (Jiminy Tickets) McGregor, after learning he had instructed 8,000 mail-order ticket buyers in the United States to make their payments in U.S. dollars (then worth 38 percent more than Canadian) to a company he owned. McGregor was charged with fraud and sued by OCO '88.

The availability of seats has relieved the pressure on OCO '88 to accommodate the worldwide media, most of whom were sweating the initial report that only 80 seats - including eight for the entire U.S. contingent - would be available for figure skating.