Payne And Gain For Games Despite Setbacks, Olympic Boss Says Everything Is On Schedule

As Atlanta’s Olympic marathon turned toward a 100-day sprint, organizers could be forgiven for wondering when the hurdles would come down.

They have had to contend with a host of problems while readying their city for the centennial Olympic Games.

In recent weeks:

Two 10,000-pound beams crashed to the ground minutes after they were installed at the $21 million Olympic swimming arena at Georgia Tech.

Construction of several other projects, including the showpiece Centennial Olympic Park, was accelerated to make up time lost in an unusually cold and wet winter and early spring.

Despite an almost obsessive concentration on raising money, organizers of the privately funded games reported they still needed about $200 million more to cover the $1.7 billion it will cost to stage the games.

And nearly everyone was griping about the traffic snarls caused by Olympic preparations.

So why was Olympic organizing committee head Billy Payne smiling?

“All of us … are about to encounter that which I believe will become one of the most intense, nerve-wracking but wonderful times of our lives,” said Payne, president of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games.

For all the tumult the city has encountered in six years of getting ready for the Summer Games, there has been one constant: the lack of worry expressed by Payne, the city’s Olympic boss.

The latest raft of problems that have confronted the organizing effort are, in Payne’s view, inevitable bumps on the road to the big payoff.

The work ahead, he said, is great but not insurmountable. The clock will tick more loudly, however, on Wednesday, when the 100-day countdown starts.

“While what we have to do is a lot, it was never supposed to be done except in the last 100 days,” Payne said in an interview, sounding relaxed for someone who’s having a party with a guest list of 2 million people.

“I don’t want to understate the enormity of that, but I do want to put it in perspective that there are no time pressures whatsoever, because in every case there are schedules to do all that and we’re right on schedule.”

The biggest job remaining for the Atlanta organizers is finishing the 12 arenas that are being built for the Summer Games. In the next few weeks, ACOG also will take over about 20 existing facilities it must adapt for Olympic use.

Needing a volunteer force of 40,000, ACOG still is wading through the 45,000 applications. The volunteers then must be trained and motivated to work long, grueling hours in exchange for a uniform, box lunches and the chance to say they were part of the Olympics.

A 15,000-mile Los Angeles-to-Atlanta torch relay, critical to stirring up national enthusiasm for the games, is set to begin April 27.

And rehearsals are soon to begin for the opening ceremony, a top-secret extravaganza produced by Hollywood whiz Don Mischer.

So far, Atlanta’s preparations have earned high marks from the International Olympic Committee, which has been closely monitoring the work. An IOC review panel will make its final pre-Olympic inspection next month.

“This time, the thing to do will be to make sure that everything is right for the athletes,” said Dick Pound, the IOC member who heads the review panel. “By that time, they should be into virtually every venue, or have their access plans and lighting and rewiring plans for all the internal stuff ready to go.”

Over the past six years, the mood of Atlanta residents has swung from yearning to fear to excitement. Now it finally seems to be settling into eager anticipation.

“We’re going to come out fine. I like the way the city’s dressing up,” said Lloyd A. Givens Jr., a downtown office worker.

“I’ve got some concern about how they’re going to handle the sheer numbers of people,” said Pat Bendert, another downtown worker. “But I think the city’s going to look spectacular.”

What about those problems?

Although the falling girders at the aquatic center shut down work at part of the arena, officials insist the facility will be ready in time. A federal investigation is continuing into the cause of the accident, which resulted in no injuries. But coming almost a year to the day after a fatal construction accident at the main Olympic Stadium, the accident sent ACOG scurrying to assuage fears that Olympic arenas are unsafe.

“We have had two accidents over almost $600 million of construction,” Payne said. “There is no quality of construction problem that’s ongoing at ACOG.”

If it wasn’t falling beams causing problems, it was falling rain.

The Centennial Olympic Park work site got so badly soaked that small helicopters recently were employed to hover and fan dry the ground. By working nights and weekends, crews have gotten back on schedule, said Kellie Cannon of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, which is overseeing development of the park.

As for fund raising, ACOG says it is confident that ticket orders and souvenir sales will generate enough revenue to pay the bills.

“All along we’ve been told by Atlanta that their revenue forecast is solid, and that if it looks for some reason like they’re not going to make it, they’ll cut what they have to cut,” Pound said.