ROME (AP) — Construction on the main hockey arena is still not finished. Spectator and media areas at the controversial sliding venue also need to be completed.

And with exactly two months to go to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics , there is another major area that local organizers are concentrating on: only slightly more than half of the 1.5 million tickets for the games have been sold.

As the torch relay began in Rome on Saturday, only slightly more than 850,000 tickets had been sold.

While sales abroad are meeting expectations, interest among Italians remains low.

“That’s normal. The local fans get interested closer and I think the beginning of the torch relay will be a very important moment for people realizing that,” local organizing committee CEO Andrea Varnier told Th

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