London 2012 Olympic ticket website crashes after sprint finish

The London 2012 Olympics ticketing website crashed last night as thousands of people tried to order tickets before the midnight deadline.

At around 10:30pm a number of people couldn't access the website and were presented with the following message:

"We are experiencing high demand. You will be automatically directed to the page requested as soon as it becomes available. Thank you for your patience."

London 2012 confirmed the problem in a post on its website, saying that the "temporary delay" was due to a "surge of applications". In response to the issue, London 2012 extended the ticket application deadline until 1am. It also confirmed that all orders made during the evening were processed successfully.

Andreas Edler, managing director of hosting company Hostway UK, said that the ticketing website should have been able to "cope with the excess of visitors". He added: "The ticket allocation process for London 2012 has already come in for a lot of criticism, but now the organisers could be faced with thousands of disappointed sports fans who were unable to even get online."