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Delhi 2010


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The venues look very good on the web site and from the descriptions given by those who have been there they are excellent, it seems they economized where they thought they might be able to get away with it on the athletes village,wich is a shame, but its not the first time an athletes village has been criticised or unfinished just before a games,

The main stadium is stunning and makes the London 2012 stadium look drab.

If they have thousands of works on the the village site improving it its clearly going to be dramatically different by the time the games start.

And as has been pointed out we’re not hearing much compliant from the Australians so the village cant bad all bad.

I think any athlete that doesn’t go because of this is just being an old woman.

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Of course the facilities look great on the organizer's website. The will pick the best images and angles possible in promotional materials.

But to scoff at athletes concerned about the state of the athletes' village is down right dangerous. There are diseases they could contract in such filthy and poorly equipped facilities. There have been terrorist attacks in India. And what about the food service conditions in the village? If the toilets are backed up and sitting on the lawn, what does that say for the dining hall? This is serious stuff for young athletes. Their lives and health could be at risk.

But I guess none of that matters. The stadium is really pretty. <_<

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When a country hosts an international sporting event, they make a commitment to the athletes to produce the best facilities possible, to secure that they will compete, train, and reside under the most secure, healthy, and safe conditions possible.

This is important stuff, people! The Games are for the athletes. Not just stoking national pride. And these Games are putting both at risk.

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Have we had any reports on the facilities for the media? It looks like the BBC aren't risking it (though a decision made prior to this weeks news) considering the main hosts are in the UK fronting Ryder Cup coverage on Sunday, then hosting Delhi coverage on Monday.

(Presumably though even though the presenters and studio aren't in Delhi, they'll have commentators and reports there.)

(Presumably though even though the presenters and studio aren't in Delhi, they'll have commentators and reporters there.)

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Yes, the presenters will be in London; I read this on Jake Humphrey's twitter feed, because he's hosting this year (they reckon he'll be fronting the 2012 coverage and are giving him this as a "trial"). They'll obviously have commentators in the stadiums though.

The Welsh team have posted some pictures of their facilities and they look pretty nice. It seems there are vast differences between the best apartments and the worst.

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"The Welsh team have posted some pictures of their facilities and they look pretty nice. It seems there are vast differences between the best apartments and the worst".

this is the piont Im making.

The food hall is said to be immaculate ,

To suggest any one is going to catch a disease is not just inaccurate but simply hysteria.

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"The Welsh team have posted some pictures of their facilities and they look pretty nice. It seems there are vast differences between the best apartments and the worst".

this is the piont Im making.

The food hall is said to be immaculate ,

To suggest any one is going to catch a disease is not just inaccurate but simply hysteria.

TowerBridge, u sound like a paid hack of Delhi 2020.

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No,

We haven’t seen any pictures of the food hall as we are only being fed the bad news ,

Which tends to be the way with news channels,

There have been specific problems like the flooding , which would delay the completion of parts of the village, hence the problems we have ,and the bridge collapse the course of which we don’t know,

A Crain could have fallen on it, we don’t know. This sometimes happens in the uk to.

None of this is the news you would want a in the weeks before the games is duo to start.

But it doesn’t mean the whole event will be a disaster.

The security risk of travelling to India in general has nothing to do with the commonwealth games.

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No,

We haven’t seen any pictures of the food hall as we are only being fed the bad news ,

Which tends to be the way with news channels,

There have been specific problems like the flooding , which would delay the completion of parts of the village, hence the problems we have ,and the bridge collapse the course of which we don’t know,

A Crain could have fallen on it, we don’t know. This sometimes happens in the uk to.

None of this is the news you would want a in the weeks before the games is duo to start.

But it doesn’t mean the whole event will be a disaster.

The security risk of travelling to India in general has nothing to do with the commonwealth games.

There have been images of the food hall posted in this thread! How about actually looking at the posts and doing some research before parachuting in with glib posts.

And your reference to a crane possibly falling on the footbridge is just ridiculous. Every report including statements issued by the Delhi organising committee that it was a structural problem and had nothing to do with some kind of third agent.

As for your inane comment that the security risk of travelling to India has nothing to do with the Commonwealth Games, considering that several governments have issued travel advice warings that directly state a link (as seen in the Australian Department of Foreign Affair's warning between the holding of the games in Delhi and terrorist attacks then I'd rather believe a professional government agency than your unfounded generalisations.

And unless you think that a games where at least 42 people have died in the process of deliverying the questionable venues for these games is acceptable these games are already a disaster.

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And the IOC sovereign has tried once again to save Delay from the fire

Give India a chance for "last ditch" effort: IOC chief

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/commonwealthgames/story/2010/09/24/sp-commonwealth-rogge.html?ref=rss#ixzz10UsbBgTm

India's potential for hosting future Olympics should not be written off before giving embattled New Delhi organizers a chance to pull off the Commonwealth Games with a "last-ditch" effort, IOC president Jacques Rogge said Friday.

Rogge told The Associated Press that he hopes India can come through, just as Greek organizers overcame "doomsday scenarios" to stage the successful 2004 Athens Olympics despite severe construction delays and political wrangling.

The International Olympic Committee leader will travel to New Delhi next week to attend the Oct. 3 opening of the Commonwealth Games, which were put at risk this week by filthy conditions at the athletes' village, a pedestrian bridge collapse and health and security concerns.

The chaotic preparations have seemingly doomed India's hopes of bidding for the 2020 Olympics, but Rogge said it was too early to rule the country out.

"I think I can hardly make a judgment before the Games have even started," Rogge said. "Let's give them the chance to prove they can stage good games. It would be with a last-ditch effort and it probably would be costly, but let's hope they can fulfil that.

"Hopefully the Indians can pull out a last-ditch effort like the Greeks have done.

The Commonwealth Games was meant to underline India's emergence as an Asian power on the world stage and serve as a platform for an Olympic bid.

"It's far too premature to discuss this," Rogge said. "This is something that has to be seen by the Indians themselves. There is no doubt they will make an analysis of the Games. They will have to see if their original intentions can be kept or not."

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Even the U.S. State Department - a country not even participating in the Commonwealth Games - has issued a travel advisory for U.S. citizens in Delhi.

Of course, some of these kind of things are general in nature and travelers to big international events do need to consider the security precautions. But there have been a number of terrorist attacks in Delhi and in India in the past number of years. And in its warning, the Canadian government raised concern over dengue fever, a mosquito borne illness. With all the water from the flooding and rain, this is prime breeding conditions for mosquitoes!

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And the IOC sovereign has tried once again to save Delay from the fire

I agree with Rogge it was too early to say it has been a diaster.

Even the U.S. State Department - a country not even participating in the Commonwealth Games - has issued a travel advisory for U.S. citizens in Delhi.

Of course, some of these kind of things are general in nature and travelers to big international events do need to consider the security precautions. But there have been a number of terrorist attacks in Delhi and in India in the past number of years. And in its warning, the Canadian government raised concern over dengue fever, a mosquito borne illness. With all the water from the flooding and rain, this is prime breeding conditions for mosquitoes!

Do you really think there will be no terrorist threat in London in 2012

And unless you think that a games where at least 42 people have died in the process of deliverying the questionable venues for these games is acceptable these games are already a disaster.

I don’t think the venues are questionable

They have all been very highly rated

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A sensible and pertinent op ed piece from a Delhi writer (who I have previously cited regarding the exploitation of Delhi's underclass and the numerous deaths at the 2010 venues):

A reality check for India's middle class

Amrit Dhillon

September 25, 2010

The Delhi Games fiasco is a long-overdue reminder of the country's true state.

THE delusional and self-satisfied antics of the Indian middle class have been brutally ripped apart and exposed - like some of the Games facilities - by the farce of the Commonwealth Games being played out in the Indian capital. It's been a curious derangement. Reasonably educated and moderately affluent people confused wishful thinking with reality as though merely wishing for something was sufficient to bring it about.

For years, the dinner-table talk in middle-class homes has been of India's new image in the world, its rightful desire to play a bigger role on the world stage, and its legitimate aspiration for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Fantastic rates of economic growth and a new prosperity, so the smug talk went, had finally laid to rest the old painful images of India's immemorial poverty.

Seduced by their new gleaming shopping malls, mobile phones, plasma TVs, trendy wine bars and luxury cars, the middle class smirked at having abolished the memory of those monstrously hateful words of V. S. Naipaul in Area of Darkness: "Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks. They defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets … The truth is that Indians do not see these squatters and might even, with complete sincerity, deny that they exist.''

What the Indian middle class has been busy denying for a decade is the reality of India's poverty: that 830 million Indians make less than 20 rupees (A50¢) a day; that if you drive 30 minutes outside the big cities, you confront living conditions in the villages that are almost mediaeval; and that while the scourge of starvation may no longer haunt India, millions, including 2000 to 3000 children every day, die a slow death from malnutrition.

Indian statistics on health, infant mortality, malnutrition and income are worse than those for sub-Saharan Africa. Indians lack basic necessities - clean homes, clean drinking water, toilets, medicines.

The rich, who travel first class, have to pick their way through families sleeping on the ground and, from the train, they can see slum dwellers relieving themselves on the tracks because they have nowhere else to go.

Yes, some Indians had convinced themselves that, in the popular slogan, India was ''shining''. Merely because the economy was booming and the stockmarket soaring, the country was poised on the threshold of superpowerdom.

It was these delusional fantasies that made the middle class think its bumbling ''babus'' (bureaucrats) and corrupt politicians could organise a successful international sports event.

Again, they ignored the reality around them. Every day, the same Indians visit government offices where they see the same squalid sight: rooms that have not been painted for a decade, where the walls are splattered with the dirty orange-brown stains left by the ''paan'' (betel nut) spat out by its masticators, rotting furniture, leaking taps, dirty windows, dust, and fetid toilets with wet floors where the stink makes you gag.

What made them think the same men and women who live and work in such conditions possessed the standards and project managements skills necessary to create world class structures and organise a sports event of the magnitude of the Commonwealth Games? A ludicrous sense of superiority.

It was the same superiority complex that had some Indians frothing at the mouth at Slumdog Millionaire's success. "Why does the West have to show our slums?" they harrumphed, as though India's slums, where millions live out their entire lives without a shred of dignity or comfort, were a thing of the past.

The men in charge of the Games - Organising Committee secretary-general Lalit Bhanot and chairman Suresh Kalmadi - display the same self-satisfaction. In an interview a year ago with Bhanot in his office, I was appalled at the hubris oozing from every pore as I asked him about the country's preparedness.

His body language and the expression on his face were that of a feudal lord who could not be questioned.

Kalmadi is no better. Various countries offered him their expertise in arranging the Games but he flicked the offers aside contemptuously, despite the fact that the last time India arranged such a gigantic event was the Asian Games in 1982. No, thank you, we Indians are far too clever to need any help.

It sounds mean, but there is a touch of divine justice in the shame felt by many middle class Indians over the Games fiasco. When they were prospering and leaving their fellow citizens far behind, they never spared a thought for them and their daily humiliations.

Nor did they ever spare a thought for the rural labourers who slaved in the searing heat to build the stadiums, bridges, flyovers, and Games village to make middle class Indians proud, while living themselves in tents next to sewers infested with mosquitoes. Now they know the sting of humiliation.

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This will be true of India,(we have all seen Slum dog millionaire)

But the politics of the entire country are not a specific reason for thinking the games will be a disaster.

And staying away from the games wont help anyone in India ether,

So I hope they will be a success and believe they still can be.

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