Eye on Athens, China stresses a 'frugal' 2008 Olympics

As Athens breathlessly opens its Summer Games Friday, a continent away the realities of readying and financing the Olympics of 2008 are beginning to sink in.

The Beijing Olympics will be the first ever hosted in image-conscious and sports-crazy China, which pulled out all the stops to get the 2008 Games after a heartbreaking loss to Sydney for 2000. State media here have steadily promised a world-beating Games featuring avant-garde stadium designs and a new transport system - "the best Olympics in history," as lavish propaganda states, at a cost of $20 to $40 billion.

Yet such triumphal tones are now giving way to a more modest depiction of the 2008 enterprise, one that reflects older values of modesty as well as the maddening details of putting together an event that will bring the world to China's door. The new language in Beijing for 2008 stresses a "workable games" and "pragmatism in hosting," and state media now speak of a desire to make 2008 a "good Olympics for the world."

Beijing's mayor Wang Qishan goes further, saying the Beijing games, set to open on Aug. 8, 2008, will be a "frugal Olympics," not one that features too many "luxuries." The comment was part of a reevaluation following a brush with charges that sports officials used money for housing projects and perks, an academic protest over extravagant foreign designs, and problems with cost and coordination. This week, with attention focused on Athens, a new deadline for completion of the sports venues was announced. Only days ago, officials swore the sites would be finished in 2006; now the date is 2007.

In massive stretches of weedy fields outside Beijing's fourth ring road, work has halted on a set of signature venues, including the National Stadium and the "Water Cube" swimming complex.

The stadium in particular, whose unique latticework design of looping exterior steel girders has earned it a fond nickname of "bird's nest," has come under fire. A paper by 10 members of the Chinese Academies of Science and Engineering stated "the outlandish designs overemphasized visual effects." Top party officials responded, reportedly, by insisting that Chinese Olympic authorities not "prefer grandeur and seek foreign styles blindly."

The bird's nest design by Swiss firm Herzog and DeMeuron was accepted after a vote in Beijing. The city's original design specifications required a retractable roof to cover the open center of the "bird's nest" in case of rain or snow. But it now appears that will be scrapped at a savings of $37 to $40 million.

In some ways, the changes may just be a natural mid-course correction.

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