The Water Cube isn't the easiest venue to get into, the parents of Canada's Olympic swimmers have discovered. (Color China Photo/Associated Press)

While sports fans in China battled massive queues and the occasional scuffle to get their hands on the final batch of Olympic tickets on Friday, the families of Canadian swimmers have had to fight for their own passes to the Beijing Games.

With tickets in short supply for events at the Beijing Water Cube, some Canadian parents told the Vancouver Sun that they've had to go through ticket brokers or even bid against each other on eBay to secure their spots at the Olympic swimming venue.

They've also set up deals with parents from other countries to secure last-minute tickets if one side's children don't qualify for finals.

"It's crazy what parents have had to do to get these tickets," Lawrie Johns, the father of B.C. swimmer Brian Johns and the leader of a family support group called C-Spot (Canadian Swimmers Parents Organizing Themselves) told the Sun.

High demand, low supply

"We're swim fans and we want to be at all the sessions. It's like being a baseball fan and being told you can only attend four innings."

The parents of the 27 Canadian swimmers set to compete at the Aug. 8-24 Games have obtained 373 tickets from Swim Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee, which lobbied the Beijing Organizing Committee on the parents' behalf.

The total fell short of the 570 tickets the Canadian families wanted, but is far better than the 26 the organizing committee originally allotted for the 17,000-seat Water Cube, which will host 15 sessions.

Caroline Assalian, the COC's executive director of Olympic Preparations and Games, told the Sun that tickets have been in short supply across the board, though the always popular swimming events are especially difficult to get into.

"Swimming is probably the worst. Ticket supply for family and friends has been a problem across the vast majority of sports, but the volume of ticket requests in swimming is the most challenging," she said.

Thinking of Vancouver 2010

"It's also something we think is going to happen in Vancouver at the 2010 Games. For many high-demand sessions the demand will exceed the supply. Absolutely."

Ticket-seekers in China had to endure huge lineups on Friday as the final batch of tickets went on sale to the public in Beijing.

Scuffles broke out at one ticket site as officials opened additional sales windows, causing some fans to stampede ahead of others in a bid to buy some of the 250,000 available tickets.

Some 6.8 million Olympic tickets have been available for domestic and foreign sales.

Organizers say they are taking precautions against fake tickets and black market scalping — both common in China.

The official Xinhua news agency said Thursday that Beijing police have detained 60 suspects for scalping Olympic Games tickets in the past two months, citing a police spokesman.

Those found selling tickets on the black market could face 10 to 15 days in detention, Xinhua said.