Special report: 2008 Olympic Games

    HONG KONG, July 27 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong has got an extra batch of 14,000 tickets for the Olympic equestrian events, which the city will be co-hosting in August, a local company charged with organizing the equestrian events announced Sunday.

    The Hong Kong-based Equestrian Company said the tickets will be available starting from July 29 at local branches of the agent China Travel Service (CTS), with prices ranging from 58 HK dollars (7.44 U.S. dollars) to 544 HK dollars (69.74 U.S. dollars) each.

    "To further encourage public engagement in the events, the Equestrian Committee (Hong Kong) of the BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games) had applied for another 14,000 tickets to be sold in Hong Kong," said Tang Ho-kong, head of game services of the Equestrian Company, at a press conference in Hong Kong.

    Hong Kong will host the equestrian events of the Beijing Olympic Games on Aug. 9 to Aug. 21. A total of 200,000 equestrian tickets for 13 sessions are on offer to the public, of which half have been allocated to Hong Kong, organizers said.

    The 104,000 equestrian tickets on offer in Hong Kong so far, including those for early morning sessions, have proved quite popular, with 4,000 left unsold, Chief Executive of the Equestrian Company Lam Woon-Kwong said on a separate occasion.

    The other half, on offer outside Hong Kong, have been sold out, he added.

    The latest 14,000, all Games-time tickets, will be the last batch allocated to Hong Kong, and members of the public can buy the tickets at CTS' local branches and website on a first-come, first-served basis, company spokesman Ng Hi-on said.

    Tickets for six popular sessions will only be sold at the Mong Kok branch of China Travel Service and each applicant may select a maximum of two tickets for each popular session and 15 tickets per other session for every transaction.

    Ng said he did not expect long queues as batch were relatively small and people could also opt to book the tickets via website, adding that the company had informed the police about the ticket selling.