CLOSING CEREMONY: Tickets for Sunday night's Special Olympics closing ceremony have now been sold out, but people continue to call the spectator hotline in search of tickets.
The Croke Park event is the only Special Olympics event with an admission charge - tickets are €30 each or €100 for a family of four. All proceeds are going to Special Olympics.
The event will be headed by Westlife, Liberty X and Blue and hosted by Today FM's Ian Dempsey and Nicky Byrne of Westlife.
The passing of the flame to the Japanese organisers for the 2005 World Winter Games will be the chief ceremonial event but it will be mainly a pop concert, according to the producers, MCD Productions.
The Gaiety School of Acting and other groups will provide the pageantry of the night.
Giant screens will replay key Special Olympics moments that occurred since the delegations arrived.
Ms Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Special Olympics founder, will formally close the Games at the end of the night.
Requests to the spectator hotline for tickets soared after the opening ceremony was televised last Saturday.
The spectator hotline is receiving more than 4,000 calls a day, according to information services manager, Ms Sahra O'Neill.
The hotline now opens one hour earlier, (8 a.m. - 6 p.m) due to the demand from callers. It is staffed by 30 volunteers at any given time.
Most calls come from people wanting to find out when certain events are on, and how to get there.
"We are getting a lot of calls from people who sponsored an athlete for €1,000 and now want to follow their progress," Ms O'Neill said.
"Loads of calls are coming from host towns who want to see their athletes competing. We are getting a lot of inquiries from junior schools, too. They are taking buses out to events every day."
