|
|
Thursday, September 14
Transportation is an early problem
Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia -- For some Olympic athletes, getting to
where they're trying to go may seem almost as stressful as their
competitions.
Continuing transportation problems just a day before the Sydney
Games' opening ceremony are similar to those endured in Atlanta
four years ago, U.S. Olympic Committee vice president Sandy Baldwin
said Thursday.
"We've had drivers get lost," she said. "We've had athletes
standing on street corners. This morning, the women's water polo
players missed a scrimmage because their driver took them to the
wrong university."
On Thursday, a Ukranian cyclist was knocked off her bike by a
car as she rode back to the athletes village after training. The
24-year-old cyclist, who was not identified, was treated at a local
hospital for a shoulder injury and released, a police spokeswoman
said.
Around 100 extra soldiers were scheduled to arrive Friday to
assist the hundreds of military personnel who are already involved
in the games, said a spokesman for organizing committee president
Michael Knight.
At least some of the extra soldiers would be used as bus drivers
on Olympic routes, the spokesman said, on customary condition of
anonymity.
Sydney organizers have worked frantically for the past week to
try to solve problems with the network of buses, trains and
highways that is supposed to move hundreds of thousands of
athletes, fans and news media personnel to and from the games each
day.
On Thursday, they appealed for 500 volunteers to help
out-of-town bus drivers find their way around Sydney. Organizing
committee chief executive Sandy Hollway said unfamiliar and
complicated bus routes still were causing problems for drivers
recruited from areas outside the host city.
But Baldwin's comments represented the first time officials
acknowledged the athletes were paying the price for a
transportation system that appeared to be a work in progress.
Asked if there had been problems getting U.S. teams to practice
sessions, Baldwin paused before replying, "Well, yes."
She said the boxing team had been left without a ride at one
point, and would be practicing primarily at a warehouse the USOC
has rented next door to the Olympic Village.
"It's a godsend," she said.
The water polo team, in the first women's Olympic tournament,
was to have scrimmaged at the University of Sydney but was taken to
another, unidentified school and missed the session.
Other U.S. Olympic representatives said the men's volleyball
team was dropped off from its bus on the wrong side of a highway
for a practice session. Members wound up crossing the road and
scrambled to find the court.
Baldwin said a flood of new arrivals in recent days had put
added pressure on the athletes' transportation system.
"We got 170 athletes from our team into the village in the last
two days, and now have more than 450 there, and that's when we've
seen the unexpected situations," she said.
Atlanta finally got its problems solved and Baldwin said she
expected Sydney to do the same.
Although the USOC has put its own transit plans for athletes in
place before -- at the 1995 Pan American Games in Argentina --
Baldwin said she did not anticipate having to follow that route in
Sydney.
|  | |
ALSO SEE
One million partygoers catch Sydney's 15 minutes of flame
IOC's Samaranch on eve of Games: Sydney is ready
Schedule
|