Atlantic Cities on our Olympics
Yep, every time there’s a summer Olympics there will be a revival of stories on the mismanagement of the 1976 games, such as this piece in Atlantic Cities.
One of the illustrations there is a ticket, which reminds me of a story. If you can get hold of an Olympic ticket from 1976, turn it over, and you’ll see it was printed by Imprimerie Leblanc. (I can find pictures of the fronts of the 1976 tickets, but no backs.)
Imprimerie Leblanc never existed. The contract had been won by a printing company with an undeniably English name – a company that still prints tickets – and this was considered not so desirable, so a fictional printer with a French name was credited for the work.
Dhomas 13:44 on 2012/07/26 Permalink
I’ve found a picture of the verso of a 1976 Montreal Olympics ticket here:
It shows the printer as being “D. English”, not “Imprimerie Leblanc”.
Also, I can’t find any place online which makes reference to this kind of story, other than another post by Kate on Flickr.
Where did you hear about this story, Kate?
Kate 15:26 on 2012/07/26 Permalink
I did some work for D. English, where I was told the story and shown some Olympics tickets with the Leblanc credit on them.
Dhomas 16:08 on 2012/07/26 Permalink
Interesting story. These tickets are probably already pretty rare. I wonder if the ticket collector at the website I linked to has a version of the ticket that is even rarer since it show the actual printer, or if the “Imprimerie Leblanc” tickets are the scarce ones.