Sydney plans for 1988

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32564, 25 March 1971, Page 22

Sydney plans for 1988

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyriahti SYDNEY. Sydney has already begun preparations for a bid to stage the 1988 Olympic Games.

Although final applications for the Games do not have to be made until 1982, both the City Fathers and the New South Wales State Government have given their support for such a move.

The first step towards getting the Games came with the recent appointment of the state’s first Minister for Sport. He is Mr Eric Willis, a 49-year-old energetic politician who also has the jobs of Chief Secretary the No. 2 position in the State Government and Minister for Tourism. PRIDE AT STAKE The day after he received his new portfolio, Mr Willis announced that Sydney would bid for the Olympic Games. He wants the city to be Australia’s new sporting capital —a position long held by Melbourne, which staged Australia’s first Olympic Games, in 1956.

Holding the Games in Sydney in 1988 also commemorates the bicentenary of Australia’s settlement by English convicts.

However, Sydney will have to work full time at improving its sporting facilities to Olympic standard. And it might well take the next 17 years to do so. This city of nearly 3m people lacks a modem sports stadium, a swimming pool of international standing, a boxing stadium, an athletic village and a cycling track.

Government officials already have a team of architectural consultants working on the possibility of one huge sporting complex at Moore Park, the only big open park area relatively close to Sydney. The major problem will be die cost of staging an Olympic Games in Australia. In 1956, it cost Melbourne an estimated slBm, in 1964, Japan was reported to have spent s9oom. The last Games, at Mexico City, cost the Government sBom just for construction and administration. The Munich Olympics next year have already been estimated to cost up to s44om. First estimates of the cost to stage the Games in Sydney range from sloom to ssoom.