The Olympic Venues -- Sydney, Australia.

      The original Olympic plan aimed at providing the most modern facilities and the best conditions that money could buy. Most of the events will be held within the Sydney metropolitian area - within a 30 km radius from Homebush Bay, the location of the Olympic Stadium. However, some of the soccer (football) preliminaries will be held in Adelaide, Melbourne , Brisbane & Canbera.

There are 4 Olympic Areas or precincts. They are all well connected by road, rail, and water transport services.The precincts are :

Sydney Olympic Park(Homebush)

Sydney East

Sydney West

Darling Harbour

Sydney Olympic Park
       This is the hub of the Games. Located at Homebush Bay, approximately 15 km west of the Sydney
CBD(Central Business District), it was built on the site of an industrial dump & old abattoir works. This site's regeneration , has been used as a metaphor for the environment.These Games have been promoted as the "Green Games".

Sydney Olympic Park will host in total 15 sports: aquatics, archery, athletics(track & field),
badminton, baseball, football-soccer(the final), gymnastics, handball, hockey, pentathlon, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, and volleyball.The Opening & Closing ceremonies will of course also be held here.The facilities at Homebush Bay include the Olympic Stadium (Stadium Australia), the Tennis Baseball, and Hockey Centres, the Archery Park, the Super Dome (used for Basketball & gymnastics,the Aquatic Centre and the Olympic Village. The Olympic stadium has seating for 110,000 spectators. This will be reduced to 80,000 after the Games are over. Built at a cost of $AUS700 million Allsteel rods, glass, & suspension cable. To an engineer this probably looks beautiful.

The design of the stadium's roof maximises the use of natural lighting with a translucent roof
over all seating areas. (this is repeated in the roof of Homebush Olympic train station) Light scoops and light wells are used in areas which the translucent roof doesn't cover, to transmit light into the building. This use of natural lighting and natural ventilation should help reduce the need for artificial cooling and lighting. Rainwater collected from the roof will be stored for irrigation, and any reclaimed water will be used for toilet flushing.

This, combined with state-of-the-art taps, showers, drainage and cisterns should help to minimise waste, reduce energy usage , water comsumption ,and improve its environmental features. Recently, during trials for the Australian Olympic team , problems were noted concerning wind levels inside the Stadium. This seems to be due to the gaps that were left between the seating towers to improve ventalation. Tailwinds in excess of 2 metres/sec are illegal and disqualify records. Headwinds, are also bad as they slow sprinters down. Possible solutions involve blocking the gaps (with perspex, as was done in the Seville'99 World Championships). The perfect
solution would be to seal off the entire stadium with a roof. This is however not allowed under
Olympic Rules. Hopefully, by the time the Games are upon us, these problems will have been
solved.

The Olympic Village will house over 15000 athletes. It is situated within Olympic Park, just a
few minutes walk from all the venues. This village is being used as an experiment in solar
power -- part of the organiser's promise to deliever an enviromentally friendly Games. There
will be 477 houses and 330 units in the total development. After the Games, the village is
earmarked to become a housing estate. Some of the units have already been sold to post-games
dwellers.

Sydney East
This area covers the Eastern Suburbs of the city of Sydney and includes the suburb of Bondi
where the beach volleyball will be held. Sydney Harbour is also covered in this region. All
sailing events will be held here. The teams will be based at the Rushcutters Bay Marina. Other
events held here will include the triathlon, soccer (football), fencing, and cycling.

Sydney West
This region covers the Suburbs of Sydney that lie west of Olympic Park.The suburbs include
Penrith,at the foot of the Blue Mountains, where the rowing (sprint-canoe/kayak) and white
water(slalom-canoe/kayak) courses are to be held. Other sports to be held here include mountain
bike cycling (Fairfield City Farm), equestrian (Horsley Park), shooting (Cecil Park) and
softball (Blacktown's Aquilina Reserve).

Darling Harbour
Darling Harbour is a relatively new development in Sydney. Once also a wasteland, it was
transformed just 15 years ago into a conference,hotel and casino district. Situated on the
Harbour foreshore, and within sight of the skyscrapers of the Sydney CBD, its conference centre will be used for 5 indoor sports: judo, boxing, wrestling, weightlifting, and volleyball.