SYDNEY – Australian athletics great Raelene Boyle fears that Brisbane 2032 will look like a “cheapskate” Olympics after the decision to stage track and field events at a 49-year-old stadium in the southern suburbs of the city.
The organisers had planned to revamp the city’s Gabba cricket stadium to host the opening and closing ceremonies as well as athletics, but the Queensland government blanched at the cost and ordered a review in December.
The review on March 18 proposed a new purpose-built 55,000-seat Olympic stadium be constructed in an inner city park at a cost of A$3.4 billion (S$3 billion).
However, Queensland Premier Steven Miles rejected that recommendation on the grounds of cost and decided rugby stadium Lang Park would host the ceremonies with track and field shunted to the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre (QSAC).
“It is a shame for the sport and the city,” the 72-year-old Boyle, who won three silver medals in sprints at the 1968 and 1972 Olympics, told News Corp.
“I don’t think it will show the city off that well and Brisbane could look like cheapskates are running the Games. The only thing going for it is there is already a track there.
“I don’t think it’ll be a great place to have track and field because it’s old. It is a small stadium and will have to be revamped dramatically.”
But she added: “I also see the other side in that this is a terrible time to be spending money on the Olympics when people are struggling with their mortgages and there are tent cities happening in some of the parks.”
Mr Miles, however, promised that QSAC, built in 1975 and used for the 1982 Commonwealth Games, would be refurbished at a cost of A$1.6 billion to create “the nation’s best athletics facility”.
But even that price tag was too high for Olympic powerbroker John Coates, one of the drivers of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) New Norm process under which Brisbane was awarded the 2032 Games in 2021.
The more targeted procedure aims to save hundreds of millions of dollars for host cities and increase long-term sustainability.
“I don’t see it as a given that it’s necessary to spend A$1.6 billion on QSAC,” the IOC vice-president said. “I am the IOC member in Australia and it’s my duty to remind them the basis upon which they bid for the Games.”
About 80 per cent of the venues for the 2032 Games are already in place, with the stadium refurbishments and a federal government-funded A$2.5 billion arena for swimming the only major construction projects planned.
“If we don’t honour those arrangements, there are plenty of other countries that can say, why did you give it to Brisbane when they didn’t have all the venues?” Coates added.
Meanwhile, the IOC confirmed on March 19 that Russians and Belarusians will not take part in the parade of athletes at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics in July.
The athletes from the two countries who qualify for the Games will be competing as independents without their flags and anthems following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The opening ceremony in Paris will not be held in a stadium but will be staged on the river Seine with teams floating past an estimated 300,000 spectators.
“They will not participate in the parade of delegations during the opening ceremony, since they are individual athletes,” the Olympic body said following an executive board meeting.
But it added that they would experience all other parts of the opening ceremony apart from the team parade.
“This decision is the logical consequence of the fact that the athletes with Russian and Belarusian passports are not selected as delegations but as individual athletes,” Paris 2024 Games organisers said after the IOC decision.
Para-athletes from both Russia and Belarus are also banned from attending the opening ceremony of the Paralympics. REUTERS, AFP
