Nick Westby: Olympic family must take the blame for these empty seats

Television cameras have been trained at times on red, white and blue seats with no one in them.

At the aquatics centre, North Greenwich Arena for the gymnastics and at Wimbledon for the tennis, it is becoming a common theme.

It has developed into a rather depressing footnote to the early days of the Olympic story.

The main reason for the swathes of empty seats is that members of the Olympic family – athletes and officials who are entitled to five per cent – are not taking up their allocation.

Tens of thousands of tickets for events are going unused.

A number of solutions have been devised to alleviate the problem.

Teachers, schoolchildren, and/or off-duty members of the army will be drafted in to fill the seats.

Around 3,000 tickets will be put up for resale on a daily basis.

Hopefully it will not be too late to rescue the situation with Olympic fever getting more virulent by the day.

The matter needs addressing quickly, even if that means approaching local schools to distribute free tickets among their holidaying pupils. Better still, send a truck-load up to Yorkshire to help fill those empty seats with the county’s schoolchildren.

From what I have seen in the opening three days of competition, the majority of seats have been taken and the stadiums have been full – at least the parts where the paying public have been positioned.

What the cameras do not always show, particularly in the aquatics centre, is the amount of people in the two towering wings of the magnificent structure.

The atmosphere inside the pool when a Briton walks out to swim or dive is electric.

It was a similar story at Eton Dorney yesterday for the rowing, where the packed stands flanking the water helped propel the British teams across the line.

There was hardly a spare seat in the house at the Riverbank Arena last night as Great Britain’s men’s hockey team opened up against Argentina.

Conversely, there are often pockets of empty seats at the basketball arena. That was evident on Sunday when Great Britain – with the attraction of NBA all-star Loul Deng – opened their campaign to a stadium three-quarters full.

This owed much to the Lithuanian and Argentinian fans who entertained themselves outside while they waited for their heavyweight contest to begin at 10pm.

That was a cracking game, brought to life by the passionate green-shirted Lithuanians, and blue-and-white bedecked Argentinians.

In general, London 2012 is being marvellously supported by British and international fans.

It is the Olympic family who are letting down the side.