Harsh news for Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic fans: If you don’t have a ticket confirmation by the end of today, odds are you’ll be dealing with a scalper.

The 2010 Olympics, even though they’re more than 13 months away, are all but sold out.

Thousands of would-be U.S. ticket buyers hoping to attend the Feb. 12-28, 2010 Games were notified about the success of their ticket requests this week by CoSport, the exclusive U.S. ticket agency. And for most, the news wasn’t good.

Some would-be fans who contacted The Times said they requested thousands of dollars’ worth of tickets — up to the maximum number of 48 per person — only to be notified they’re being issued only a few. And the vast majority of fans who requested tickets only for a single, favorite event apparently were shut out.

“The lottery for USA tickets to the Olympics was a huge joke,” one disgruntled fan from Oregon wrote on Olympics Insider, The Times’ Olympics blog.

The reader said his family, which has a time share in Whistler and planned to attend the Games, requested 96 tickets for a multitude of events and received only seven.

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