Thieves take NZ team's laptops

2:00 PM

Five laptop computers were stolen from the New Zealand Olympic team's headquarters in the athletes' village last night.

New South Wales police are investigating the theft. As access to the village is restricted to accredited athletes and officials the thieves are thought to be members of the "Olympic family".

New Zealand team manager Richard de Groen said the theft of all the management team's laptops was "disappointing" and would cause some inconvenience but it would not greatly disrupt the team's work.

"Police are investigating in terms of possible access but at this stage we believe our compound was locked up and there doesn't appear to be a forced entry," he said.

The team's security advisor, Detective Superintendent Jim Millar from Christchurch, was liaising with local police to help their investigation.

"We have now got to put our systems back into place. I can say that thankfully our database and records are stored on our server... So we've lost the laptops but not our information systems which is quite a relief," de Groen said.

"A number of team members and managers have their own laptops so we will be able to temporarily get going again."

The laptops are believed to be worth more than $2000 each.

Millar said local police had brought in forensic experts to help with a scene examination of the team headquarters.

"We are still working through the manner whoever has done it had managed to gain entry," he said.

- NZPA

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