Attendance
Though the attendance on the first day of the championship, which included the opening ceremony, was nearly 30,000, the total attendance over the eleven days of the championships numbered around 90,000. Organizing Committee president Fumio Ueda admitted that the lack of good Japanese athletes – Japan only won one medal, a bronze in the ski jumping team large hill event, and the best individual finish came in the women's individual sprint with Madoka Natsumi's fifth-place finish – meant that the interest was low. FIS president Gian-Franco Kasper also said he had expected higher crowds, particularly in the cross-country skiing races on the Shirahatayama course. Several newspapers slated the low turnout in headlines: Norwegian Dagbladet called it a scandal, while Swedish Aftonbladet described it as a fiasco.
Read more about this topic: FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2007
Famous quotes containing the word attendance:
“We, too, had good attendance once,
Hearers and hearteners of the work;
Aye, horsemen for companions,
Before the merchant and the clerk
Breathed on the world with timid breath.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)