Challenges for land of 'purple days'

The 2008 Olympic Games is only 300 days away. COEN LAMMERS witnesses how Beijing is coping with the final stages of its preparations.

Valerie Vili would be scratching her head if she could see the place where her Olympic dream could become reality 300 days from now.

The spot where the New Zealand shot-putter will be spinning for Olympic glory in 10 months time is just a sad pile of dirt with four rusted, ancient bicycles lying on top.

The National Stadium, better known as the Bird's Nest with its fascinating steel design, and adjacent venues were a sight to behold when the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee (BOCOG) opened the doors to its venues-in-making this week.

Even the most hardened Olympic veterans in the media pack could not avoid being in awe of the biggest building site on the planet. Beijing's Olympic Green, three times the size of New York's Central Park, is dotted with numerous giant projects-in-progress to house the competitions, media, athletes and supporting BOCOG staff.

The main Olympic stadium for next year's games resembles a colossal anthill with thousands upon thousands of Chinese tradesmen crawling through its bowels and across its magnificent roof structure.

New Zealand OSH officials would have fainted watching these painters and welders balancing 50m above the ground without any safety harness. Hundreds of their colleagues on the ground, meanwhile, were working in near darkness in the tunnels below the main stands, which felt more like a West Coast coalmine than an Olympic sporting venue.

A few hundred metres along, it was hard to imagine Moss Burmester will soon be taking on the world's best swimmers in the futuristic Aquatic Centre, nicknamed the Watercube, which today is still a concrete dustbowl.

Watching a tiny craftsman chiseling out a few extra millimetres in the main pool did raise some questions about the completion time, but there is little doubt that the Chinese will deliver a pristine Olympic infrastructure well before the opening ceremony on August 8, 2008, at 8pm.

The stadiums would be ready, well and truly on time, said ambassador Tony Browne, who has flown New Zealand's flag in Beijing for three years.

The Chinese Government is moving heaven and earth – literally – to guarantee success with no limits on budgets or manpower and the absence or resource consents or other local red tape.

The Chinese organisers are going to extreme lengths to control the environment – including the weather – by bombing the skies with chemicals which can trigger rainfall to avoid a rained-out opening ceremony.

The Chinese juggernaut will be unable to turn down the traditional August heat and humidity, but it has made an enormous commitment to temporarily reduce the pollution in one of the smoggiest cities on the planet.

In the lead-up to the games, one million households will be told to keep their cars at home and take the newly completed subway lines, while coal-fuelled power stations will be shut down and no new construction is permitted from January 1.

The thousands of cranes which dominate the skyline of this bursting city of 15.8 million people are testimony to the deadline looming large for builders to complete their projects.

The construction dust is a significant contributor to the pollution, explained ambassador Browne, who had first-hand experience of what the dirty air can do. "In my daughter's school they have purple days when the pollution reaches such a high level that no child is allowed to go outside. They eat and play inside.

"I also know people who have gone to the doctor and been told to stop smoking and who had never smoked a cigarette in their lives."

Browne says his staff get sick more often than they do at home. This heavily polluted environment causes people to operate far below their peak efficiency.

Athletes will no doubt be concerned by Browne's comments and will have to hope for favourable weather conditions, similar to the wind and rain which this week virtually eliminated the smog and turned Beijings traditional grey skies to bright blue.

"You've come at a good time. I've seen hills this week that I haven't seen before," laughed Browne who added that the clean air was also the result of a Chinese holiday in which factories were closed and millions had left the city. It did show, however, that shutting down industry and limiting cars on the road could have an instant effect at Games time.

Browne praised the Chinese ability to plan and execute, but wondered how their systems will cope with the unexpected.

"This is not a country that is built on flexibility," he said. There is a tendency to manage things from the top down which stifles individual initiative at the lower levels.

One tale from the recent under-23 rowing world championships perfectly illustrates this lack of lateral thinking. Despite one rowing final being delayed, the bus driver responsible for carrying journalists along the course, insisted on leaving on schedule. Even when the furious media pointed out that there were no boats on the water, the driver kept driving to schedule.

The test will be on the software side. How are the Chinese going to cope with the ticketing, the control of the media and the visitors?

The ticketing had already caused some headaches at test events, according to the diplomat. Embassy staff, trying to visit the recent rowing, were told that the event was sold out while the stands turned out to be nearly empty.

If you can fix something by building it, they'll build it. But China is much less experienced in the other aspects of managing big events.

The sports-mad ambassador can't wait for the Games and has secured tickets for athletics, tennis, hockey and rowing events (through the ballot like other Chinese residents).

He hopes to be standing tall for the New Zealand anthem for at least four rowing crews. "I am also hugely optimistic for the women's hockey team, so I've already got tickets for the semi-final and final."

- © Fairfax NZ News