TORONTO -- Watching dramatic sporting competitions in person provides a rush far better than any gained from seeing the events on the small screen, Canada's star athletes said Monday as they urged fans to start reserving tickets to next year's Pan Am Games.
"These are sports that TV sometimes kind of numbs us as to how fast, how high, how quick, how agile these sports really are," said Olympic medal-winning cyclist Curt Harnett, leader of Team Canada in the Games.
"For me, the opportunity to gain access to any one of them and see front and firsthand what it takes to be a top flight athlete -- really for me is an opportunity that cannot be missed."
Gymnast Rosie MacLennan, who won Canada's only gold medal in the 2012 London Olympics, said it can be a life-changing experience for children.
The most inspiring moment in her career was watching the performance of athletes who came before her, she said at the ticket kick-off event in Toronto.
"Watching my teammate and good friend Karen (Cockburn) earn her spots to the Olympic Games live -- that was the most inspiring thing as a young kid," she said. "And that kept my dream alive, kept me pushing, so ten years later, I was right there next to her."
And there's no better feeling for a Canadian athlete than hearing the national anthem played on their own turf, said Wendel Clark, former captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. But the pressure to win in front of a home crowd can be enormous.
"At home, you want the people out cheering and being behind you, because they're the extra man," he said.
Sports fans were able to start requesting tickets Monday to watch athletes from 41 countries from the Americas and the Caribbean compete in Toronto and other Ontario communities from July 10 to 26.
Seats to many coveted events -- including the opening ceremony, a one-night-only show by Cirque du Soleil -- can be requested until Oct. 6 through the Toronto2015 website.
Organizers, who are expecting to sell about 1.5 million tickets, will gauge interest in each event. When more tickets are requested than there are available, the sales will be done through a lottery system similar to what's used at the Olympics.
General sale is scheduled to start in December. Tickets for the Parapan Games, which will run from Aug. 7 to 15, go on sale in March.
But ticket sales and sponsorships alone won't pay for the Games, which is expected to cost about $2.5 billion.
David Peterson, TO2015 chairman and former Ontario premier, said he expects ticket sales will bring in about $40 million while the federal, provincial and Toronto governments will also be helping with the cost.
Organizers predict there will be 250,000 visitors from outside Ontario, while the rest will likely be local.
"These are not expensive tickets. Seventy-five per cent will be under $45," he said. "This is to let people have access to bring their families."
With more than three times the number of athletes and coaches than the Vancouver Olympics, the Pan Am Games will be one of the biggest gathering of athletes in history, Peterson said. But organizers still have to persuade people that "this is the biggest thing in town."
There are other big challenges ahead, such as settling on a transportation plan that will allow both athletes and fans to get to events at 34 different venues across the Golden Horseshoe, from Niagara in the south to Orillia in the north. Peterson said the plan likely won't be finalized until the last minute.
A prolonged winter also slowed down construction at six venues, including the $147.5-million Hamilton stadium. It forced Hamilton's Tiger-Cats to play in a much smaller field in August, but finally opened in time for the Labour Day Classic on Sept. 1.
Completion dates for the Toronto track and field centre, a facility in Markham, the equestrian park in Caledon and the shooting centre in Cookstown have all been pushed back by a month or two. A ballpark in Ajax was supposed to be completed by July, but phase two of the project is now expected to be finished in November.
Peterson said he's "totally confident" that they'll all be finished before the Games. Many were scheduled to be completed a year before the Games, which provided some room for any unexpected delays.
"These are kind of the normal bumps in the road," he said.
