The Finnish people are interested in next summer's Olympic Games in Beijing. Thousands of Finns are planning to travel to Beijing to follow Olympics, Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat reported on Thursday.

In Finland, the tickets to Beijing Olympic Games were practically snatched away from the dealer's hands, explained sales manager Juha-Pekka Karkkainen from the Finnish Tourist Board, the country's official and only dealer of tickets to the Olympic Games.

Each country was assigned a quota to the Beijing games. Finland received an allotment of fewer than 10,000 tickets to sell.

"We applied for more than ten thousand tickets last spring. We were slightly disappointed with the surprisingly low number of tickets allocated to us. The first batch of several thousand tickets has practically been sold already," Karkkainen said.

"The demand is high. We continue to accept reservations from customers. Request for more tickets has sent to Chinese organizers. We expect the organizers' response to our request in November," Karkkainen added.

According to Karkkainen, there was a lot of interest towards the 2004 Games in Athens, but the 2008 Games in Beijing seems to interest people even more. People's eagerness to travel to China looks to be immense. He believes that at least 2000 Finnish Olympic tourists will add to the multitude of visitors to the Beijing Games.

Next summer's Olympic Games in Beijing run from August 8 to 24.

(Xinhua News Agency November 2, 2007)