Thursday's Transportation Troubles
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) _ Boxers stranded by the side of the road. Water polo players taken to the wrong pool. Members of the men's volleyball team left to hunt for their practice court.
When it comes to getting around Sydney for pre-Olympic practice, U.S. athletes are finding it's best to avoid the bus and stick close to home.
A day before the Summer Games begin Down Under, the American team's mission chief said Thursday that the transport problems in Sydney were beginning to remind her of those that plagued the Atlanta Games four years ago.
"It would appear to me that what they are going through is very much the same," U.S. Olympic Committee vice president Sandy Baldwin said.
Sydney Olympic organizers have worked frantically over the last week to try to solve problems with the intricate network of buses, trains and highways that is supposed to move hundreds of thousands of athletes, fans and news media personnel to and from the games each day.
But aside from confirming a British archer nicked his chin in a minor bus accident, Baldwin's comments represented the first time officials acknowledged the athletes were paying the price for a transport system still being debugged.
Asked if there had been problems getting U.S. teams to practice sessions, Baldwin paused before replying, "Well, yes."
"We've had drivers get lost," she said. "We've had athletes standing on street corners. This morning, the women's water polo players missed a scrimmage because their driver took them to the wrong university."
Later, Baldwin said the boxing team had been left without a ride at one point, and would be practicing primarily at a warehouse the USOC has rented next door to the Olympic Village.
"It's a godsend," she said.
The water polo team, in the first women's Olympic tournament, was to have scrimmaged at the University of Sydney but was taken to another, unidentified school and missed the session.
Other U.S. Olympic representatives said the men's volleyball team was dropped off from its bus on the wrong side of a highway for a practice session. Members wound up crossing the road and scrambled to find the court.
Baldwin said pressure had increased on athlete transport in recent days because more athletes were moving into the village, then spreading to practice sites throughout the Sydney area.
"We got 170 athletes from our team into the village in the last two days, and now have more than 450 there, and that's when we've seen the unexpected situations," she said.
Atlanta finally got the T-word figured out, Baldwin said, and she anticipates Sydney doing the same.
Although the USOC has put its own transit plans for athletes in place before _ at the 1995 Pan American Games in Argentina _ Baldwin said she did not anticipate having to follow that route in Sydney.
Games organizers appealed Thursday for 500 volunteers to help out-of-town bus drivers find their way around the host city.
Organizing committee chief executive Sandy Hollway said unfamiliar and complicated bus routes still were causing problems for drivers recruited from areas outside Sydney.
Dozens of drivers quit the Olympic bus service Wednesday, saying they were angry about working conditions and poor organization of timetables.
Transport Workers Union representative Scott Connelly said improvements since had been made in disputed working conditions, including provision of a roster of shifts and improved transport to and from the job.
The government also has agreed to pay a bonus of $2.20 an hour to hundreds of drivers, as well as an extra fee if they are forced to wait on the side of the road for transportation home after their shifts end.
(Copyright 2000 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
