London, Jul 28 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Hundreds of excited fans were turned away on arrival at Lord's Cricket Ground on Friday after buying fake Olympic archery tickets.

The event, a qualifying round rather than the competition proper, had been officially billed as "unticketed" - meaning closed to the public - but scam websites have been selling counterfeit tickets.

Other members of the public turned up without any tickets, believing unticketed to mean free to watch.

In the past, some events like marathons and cycle road races have been billed as unticketed, but spectators could turn up and watch as they pleased.

"I was made to feel stupid," said Fanna Horsmann visiting from Amsterdam. "We changed hotel so we could get up early and see the archery, only to be told I couldn't have read website information properly."

"It's a total fail," agreed Karen McConnell from Little Venice, "especially after all the issues I had with my ticket account which was frozen on the LOCOG (London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games) website."

In a statement to reporters, the Director of Sport for LOCOG Debbie Jevans maintained that there was adequate information on the Games website and that preliminary rounds had always been held behind closed doors.

Commenting on the counterfeit tickets, a London 2012 spokeswoman advised people to be "extremely cautious and vigilant when attempting to buy tickets and only buy from an official source."

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