Despite glitches, the Games are a hit

Sydney: Thousands of Australians and foreigners, setting aside cynicism about corrupt officials, doped athletes and bungled bussing, poured into central Sydney on Thursday to glimpse the torch that heralds the opening of the biggest Olympic Games.

The 17-day sporting extravaganza with more than 10,000 athletes from nearly 200 countries begins on Friday in Stadium Australia amid the tightest security seen in the country's premier city.

Despite fears of protests by Aborigines and groups opposed to economic globalisation, Sydney slipped into party mode, basking in the spring sunshine and the publicity provided by a spectacle that will be watched by 3.7 billion people around the world.

But more mundane matters were on the mind of the organisers as they rushed to appease angry bus drivers threatening to walk out over working conditions, further undermining an already wobbly transport system.

The Olympic Roads and Transport Authority agreed in late-night talks to pay drivers a bonus and brought in 200 government buses and drivers to reinforce a fleet of 3,500 vehicles.

Organisers also appealed for volunteer navigators to help direct out-of-town drivers after complaints from athletes, media and officials who ended up late or lost.

"Every Games is the same," said a sympathetic Juan Antonio Samaranch, head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). "In the beginning we have transport problems," he told a news conference. But he added, "I think they are solving the problems."

A bigger problem for the 80-year-old Spaniard is the taint of corruption that has dogged the IOC since a 1998 bribery scandal over the awarding of the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City.

Samaranch said he was not worried about attacks on the organisation such as a survey on world corruption published on Wednesday by the Berlin-based "Transparency International" which blasted the IOC, saying some of the leaders of the "bribe-scarred" organisation were still "running the show".

Asked if he was concerned about the criticism, Samaranch said, "We are not worried. We are used to it." The US Justice Department is still investigating the scandal with hundreds of boxes of documents yet to be made public. "I have to be very clear. The IOC members...were sanctioned three months after we knew of the facts about Salt Lake City," Samaranch said.

He said a rise in the number of athletes becoming IOC members showed that the organisation was reforming. The organisation has also tried to clean up its image by cracking down on drugs, introducing a new test for the stamina-boosting substance EPO.

Three competitors have already been fingered as drug cheats and barred from the Sydney Games. They are Taiwanese weightlifter Chen Po-pu, Bulgarian triple jumper Iva Prandzheva and Kazakhstan freestyle swimmer Yevgenia Yermakova.

An International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) arbitration panel hearing into the doping case of German distance runner Dieter Baumann was adjourned for 24 hours on Thursday.

IAAF spokesman Giorgio Reineri said the panel had postponed its hearing until Friday morning to allow the 1992 Barcelona Olympic 5,000 metres champion to present his case in person.

Baumann, 35, tested positive last November for the anabolic steroid nandrolone. He was cleared by the German federation after claiming his toothpaste had been spiked.

The IAAF council did not accept his explanation and sent the case to its arbitration panel. But despite the scandals the Games are a hit. Nearly all events are sold out, and anyone hoping for black market tickets could also be out of luck since scalping is illegal in New South Wales state.

Immigration authorities said on Thursday they had stopped and deported an American ticket scalper when he arrived in Sydney on Wednesday for the Olympic Games.

The man was detained after arriving on a flight from Los Angeles and ordered out of the country. "He was involved in ticket scalping and counterfeiting operations in other countries. He was turned back," a spokesman said.



(c) Reuters Limited.