Round-Up: Commonwealth Games Venues Unveiled !

The Commonwealth Games organizing committee took Indian reporters on a tour of four of the competition venues for the Oct.3-14 event on Sunday, with the first wave of athletes set to trickle in later this week. Construction work on the venues has been plagued with concerns over delays and safety. Here’s a round-up of what the press had to say about them, but you can also have a look for yourself.The NDTV correspondent said that after all the criticism it turns out the venues look “quite nice.”

“The Thyagaraj Stadium is truly world class,” said the correspondent. “The venue, which will host the netball events, is also India’s first eco-friendly complex.”

There were some problems with the swimming pools at the S.P. Mukherjee complex though, NDTV said.

“The diving tower’s staircase is unusually narrow, just about two feet wide, which forced the engineers to put up a board saying: Mind your Head,” said the NDTV reporter. “In the area just before the diving boards the height of the place is only six feet. Now swimmers are usually quite tall, and when they come here and try and stand straight, they’re bound to hurt their heads.”

A city public works department spent 2.29 billion rupees (about $50 million) to improve the swimming complex, according to a federal watchdog agency.

The Hindustan Times also said Thyagaraj, which will host netball games, was “the best of the lot.”

“The green stadium has automatic folding seats and will generate 3.5 megawatts of solar-powered electricity,” noted Hindustan Times reporter Shalabh Manocha.

Mail Today called the venues “classy” but said that in spite of organizing committee chiefSuresh Kalmadi’s assertions, they’re not quite ready.