Olympics: Tricky wind blows trouble at Games venues

By PETER JESSUP

The predominant spring wind is causing havoc around Sydney's Olympic venues and may affect racing at the Penrith rowing course.

The course was closed to training athletes, workers, volunteers and others after gusts straight off the nearby Blue Mountains started doing damage on Tuesday afternoon.

A Slovakian kayak competitor who briefly left his craft unattended after getting out of the water turned to see it hurled end over end 5m in the air for 50m. They have spares.

At the main stadium, wind took out 500m of windbreak and security fencing. The one-track rail line that loops off Sydney's main trunk to the Homebush Bay site of most of the venues was closed for four hours after a rail accident. A passenger train was clipped and stopped by an empty aluminium container blown from the deck of a freight car sitting on a nearby industrial side-line.

Around 200 people waited two hours for a bus as the episode developed into an embarrassment for the Games organisation, the decision having been made to go for a sole line instead of two-way to save money, and that against transport planners' advice.

Solid-framed tents built for corporate hospitality, food halls for the public and to accommodate results processors and judges, and the media, have been an interesting and sometimes scary place to be, the wind knocking them around in great billows, plastic chairs being overturned and any paper sent off at high speed as people open doors to enter and leave.

They are designed to withstand winds of 90km/h and by late Tuesday gusts were recorded at 78km/h.

The rowing will start at the Penrith regatta centre at 8.30 am each day, finishing around 11 am, in an effort to avoid the wind.

Even venue manager Donna Blay admitted to some unease with the timing of the Olympics. The course designers spent eight years monitoring local conditions, found that the predominant wind was westerly for 11 months of the year, then built the race track to run east/west.

September is the only month that registered another predominating wind, and that is the southwesterly that did the damage on Tuesday. If the race course is unduly affected by wind and waves, organisers will alter the determination of lane position.

The fastest heats rower normally takes the middle with the field set so as to fan out arrowhead-fashion across the course; if wind is high they will put the fastest heats rowers in the lane least affected by wind, a big advantage and an even bigger disadvantage to the others on the outside. If the wind is severe there is a last-ditch plan to run the races up one lane at 30 second intervals.

The race course is a picturesque redevelopment of a sand and gravel quarry, four companies combining with local government to convert 2000 ha of wasteland to a waterpark recreation area and reserve.

$A35 million ($45 million) has been spent so far on the rowing course and a nearby whitewater race course that will host the Olympic kayaking and canoeing events.

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