Over the years this has not been the sports capital of Australia.
That cachet can be claimed by Melbourne, with its famed Cricket Ground and its role as host of the Melbourne Cup–Australia’s Kentucky Derby–the Australian Open tennis championships, and the only Olympics (1956) that has taken place in the Southern Hemisphere.
Sydney briefly will become the world’s sports capital as host of the 2000 Olympic Games. But if Melbourne reclaims the country’s sporting affection after the next Games, which run Sept. 15-Oct. 1, it would not surprise Australian playwright David Williamson. He once wrote that Melbourne is a long-term relationship, while Sydney is a one-night stand.
The world’s athletes and spectators should love their fling with Sydney, a diverse and picture-postcard-beautiful city. What’s not to like about a place where $7 buys grilled octopus with Thai sauce, fries, salad and a beer in a rooftop garden next to one Sydney landmark, its Harbor Bridge, with a view of another, the Opera House?
Although even Sydneysiders–as the locals are called–sniff that the Opera House has become a trite sight, it is a sight this visitor could not take his eyes off. Of course its striking architecture masks spotty acoustics.
That’s the way one feels about the Sydney Olympics. The host city is so charming one can easily forget about potential problems next year, especially since the local government’s financial and organizational involvement minimize the possibility of snafus.
One year from Thursday, the Sydney Olympics will be half over. By then several things could put the world’s romance with Sydney on the rocks instead of on The Rocks, which is the tourist haven that abuts the Opera House in Sydney harbor:
Weather: A week in Sydney made it clear these will not be a T-shirt-and-shorts Olympics. This is early spring in the Southern Hemisphere, and that means a wide variety of conditions are possible in southeast Australia. Last year it rained often during the Olympic dates. Current forecasts for the five days beginning Thursday call for a temperature range of 51 to 72.
Temperatures in the hour after dawn last week were around 45 degrees. The morning chill will last later next year because Australia will go into daylight-saving time for the Olympics. Afternoon highs did not reach 70 a few days, and the warmer days brought windier late afternoons.
Nights will be cool, but the only sport that affects is track and field at the Olympic Stadium. Low temperatures and wind could render performances rather pedestrian.
NBC may regret not asking for an all-daytime track and field schedule as it did in Seoul (1988) to have most events live in prime time in the U.S. (Sydney and Seoul have the same time difference from the U.S.). The early-afternoon weather at the Olympic Stadium was warm and calm nearly every day last week.
Homebush Bay: The site of all the major Olympic venues had a checkered past as a salt works, brick quarry, arms depot, slaughterhouse and dump for household and industrial waste. Twenty percent of the site once was contaminated. Turning Homebush into a combination of parklands and sports palaces is an environmental reclamation project so significant even picky Greenpeace officials have approved of the Olympic-related changes.
So what’s the downside? Getting there, 10 miles west of downtown.
There is a double-edged sword in the concentration of so many venues–including the 110,000-seat Olympic Stadium, the 18,000-seat Superdome, the 17,500-seat Aquatics Center, the 15,000-seat field hockey center and the 10,000-seat tennis center. Moving hundreds of thousands of people in and out of one area is not easy.
Transportation: Sydney has an excellent train system but not enough locals use it. They prefer to drive, despite having to cope with a suburban road system that has lots of traffic lights.
To ease congestion schools will be closed during the Olympics, and businesses are being encouraged to shut down. Few individuals will be able to drive near Homebush Bay, making train and bus travel imperative for many people not accustomed to travel that way.
The question then is whether the system can handle the load or whether it collapses, as Atlanta’s subway system did during the 1996 Olympic crush.
Is that all there is? Homebush Bay now has the most impressive array of sports venues of any city in the world. Some will be downsized–the main stadium to 80,000 seats, the swim venue to 4,000, the field hockey center to 4,000–but one must wonder about them turning into so many white elephants. Australia, which has barely 19 million people, will have six cycling velodromes after it finishes the Olympic venue and builds one for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
Australia is a long way from anywhere but Indonesia and New Zealand. How many championship sports events can it attract to pay for maintaining those venues?
Such is the problem inherent in moving the Olympic Games around the world. Cities are lured to build more than common sense would otherwise suggest. One-night stands can leave a hangover.
