Date:01/08/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/08/01/stories/2004080106991600.htm

Sport - Olympic Games

Olympic village opens

ATHENS, JULY 31. The Greek kayak and canoe team and athletes from Kazakhstan were the first to move into the heavily guarded Olympic Village for the Athens Games which officially opened on Friday.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge will also join the 10,500 athletes and 5,500 officials by staying in the village for the August 13-29 Games.

They will reside in 2,290 apartments and be looked after by a staff of 11,000.

The staff will provide some 60,000 meals per day in several restaurants, while the village has a state of the art medical service, theatres, discos, a huge internet cafe and places of worship.

In addition, for the first time the athletes will have training facilities adjacent to the village.

Security is tight with two fences surrounding the compound and all visitors and vehicles thoroughly searched some 300 metres away from the main entrance.

Thomas Bach, a German vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, named the village the best he has ever seen at Olympics.

The trip to the Olympic stadium from the village on the north- western edge of Athens takes around 20 minutes while coastal venues are a 50-minute drive away.

"The Olympic Village is a prime example of this Olympic Games' legacy which will be bestowed to Greece and its people - an inexhaustible legacy that goes beyond the present and embraces future generations," said the organising committee head Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki on Friday.

The village, built at a cost of euros 350 million will be given to 2,500 families, who are beneficiaries of the Greek Workers Housing Association, after the Olympics and Paralympics.

The opening of the village marked the start of the period of the Olympic Games and the IOC authority on the important doping issue.

All doping tests carried out in Athens by the IOC (and around the world by the Anti-Doping Agency) are now Games-related — with around 4,000 tests planned overall among the athletes from 202 countries. — DPA