OLYMPIC GAMES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 196, 20 July 1936, Page 6

OLYMPIC GAMES.

The eleventh Olympic Games to be held in Berlin next month are expected to attract as many as fifty nations. Everything points to a great sporting festival. Certainly the Germans have been making every effort to justify their reputation for hospitality and to provide good sport in an appropriate setting. The Olympic Games were to have been held in Germany in 1916, and as early as 1906 plans were begun for the building- of a stadium near Berlin. Tlie war came along and Germany had to wait two more decades for the ' games. Herr Adolf Hitler himself scrapped the old plans and started a project which is expected to eclipse the great Olympic Park at Los Angeles. The whole of the Grunewald racecourse was acquired by the German Government, so that the lleicli Sports Field might be created to house the Olympic Games on an unprecedented scale. Only a short distance from Berlin and well served by electric railway, bus and tram, and entirely surrounded by forest, the Reich Sport Field covers 262 acres and is three-quarters the size of London’s Hyde Park. The principal building- is tlie massive concrete structure, the Olympic Stadium, which will accommodate 100,000 spectators.

Following the example of Los Angeles, an Olympic Village has been constructed some distance from the Reich Field, amidst attractive surroundings. The village includes a large dining hall with forty dining rooms and kitchens and a reception building where visitors and athletes _ can come together. This is a “womanless village”; not only because women visitors are to be excluded, but because the entire personnel will be masculine. The Reich War Minister will be host of the Olympic and will place a young officer with a command of the native language at the disposal of each national group, while several hundred Berlin youngsters have been voluntarily taking language instruction in order to equip themselves for voluntary service to run errands and conduct sight-seeing tours for the village inhabitants. The representatives of every nation are to be provided with the food to which they are accustomed in their own country. Every team can send its own menu in advance and the food will be provided. The North German Lloyd is to provide the stewards and kitchen personnel—some 400 in all.