By Nick Mulvenney
SYDNEY (Reuters) -The International Olympic Committee’s confidence that Brisbane organisers were on the right path to host the 2032 Olympics has been reaffirmed by a three-day visit to the city by the coordination commission, its new chief said on Thursday.
Former showjumper Mikaela Cojuangco Jaworski officially took over during the visit from IOC President-elect Kirsty Coventry as chair of the commission, which oversees preparations for the Games on behalf of the Olympic movement.
“Through our regular engagement with the organising committee, we are confident that Brisbane 2032 is on the right path,” Jaworski told a news conference in Brisbane.
“This week gave us meaningful opportunity to witness progress firsthand and to reaffirm our commitment to Games that will leave a lasting legacy for the community and place Brisbane confidently on the world stage.”
Jaworski said the example of the legacies for Melbourne and Sydney when those cities hosted the Games in 1956 and 2000 should convince waverers in Brisbane of how beneficial the Olympics would be for the city.
“Melbourne has hosted, and Sydney has hosted, and there’s certainly legacy there,” she said.
“There’s a lot of goodwill globally remembering these cities as hosts, and I think we can count on Brisbane … being brought to the world stage (if) we have a successful Games.”
Since the last meeting of the coordination commission, the Queensland government has published its third, and what it says will be the final, venue plan for the Games.
Despite bid commitments on sustainability in line with the IOC’s “New Norm” reforms for host cities, the plan included the building of a new Olympic stadium and a national aquatics centre in an inner city Brisbane park.
“When you talk about the ‘New Norm’, I think one of the key things is about the Games being part of the city or the host,” Jaworski said in answering a question about the changes.
“It’s not about turning the host into what the Games need, but the other way around. So it is unique.”
CREATE CERTAINTY
Local organising committee chief Andrew Liveris said it had been a relief to finally get a plan in place his team could enact, even if he did not think any ground would be broken on the big new venues until the end of 2026.
“I haven’t been able to wipe the smile off my face (since the announcement),” he said.
“I love to plan and implement. It’s really hard to plan when the plan keeps moving on you, right? So our job now is to create certainty out of this plan. There’s work to do on that.
“We’re not out of the woods completely, but we are mostly out of the woods, and we have certainty around some pretty big decisions.”
Liveris said all the venues needed to be completed at least a year before the start of the Games and accepted that issues of labour shortages in Australia’s construction industry and local building constraints were a concern.
“We are part of a bigger problem, and one that has to be solved by the current (Queensland) government,” Liveris said. “They’re very dedicated to doing it.”
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Peter Rutherford)
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