Calm before competition in Sydney

The Olympics are just four months away. PETER CALDER takes Sydney's temperature as it prepares for the games.

If the man on stage is sweating he's not showing it. Maybe the Egyptian blood running in his veins means he's used to the heat.

Certainly it must feel like a comedian's version of roasting in hell up on the stage of Sydney's Original Comedy Store this Wed-esday evening.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the place is almost empty. The tables, arrayed New-York-club style, cover a floor which must look the size of a football field to anyone stranded at a microphone. And so the bunch of visiting New Zealanders - the eight of us make up a lot more than half the audience - take pity on him and move to fill the chasm in front of the stage.

Peter Saleh - such is the young Egyptian's name - repays our generosity by mercilessly mimicking our accents and making jokes about nervous sheep. That's the nature of the implicit contract between comedians and their audiences: they make your life a misery, you do everything you can to assist.

Saleh is meant to be the MC, the warm-up man, but he turns out to be the attraction of the night. ("Hands up who believes in God? You do, Peter? After what he did to you?").

Fast on his feet and self-possessed to the max, he's trying to smooth the way for the rookies who will follow. But he just makes them look even more shaky than they are. With the sole exception of a hysterical Titanic take-off by a rather twisted gentleman armed with a glass of iced water and two plastic figurines, the rest is forgettable.

But if the Comedy Store is quiet in April, you can bet it will be buzzing come September. So will all of Australasia's first, and biggest, city. For the second time in its history, the world's biggest sporting event, the Olympic Games, is coming to the Southern Hemisphere.

Last time, in 1956 when sport was played in black and white and without the benefit of close-ups, the host city was Melbourne (the staid environs of the MCG were the venue for the track and field events). This year it's Sydney and Sydney's ready.

Sport in the 21st century is global big business. The traditional Graeco-Roman disciplines, like discus and wrestling, have become overshadowed by sports beloved of the billions - tennis, basketball and soccer.

And Sydney - its lively inner city and sprawling suburbs - has taken up the 21st-century challenge with enthusiasm.

Thanks to five years of planning and hard work, for the first time in history, the Olympics will be played out entirely within the limits of the host city. (Some preliminary-round soccer matches will be played elsewhere, but until they design a city with a dozen soccer stadiums, that will always happen).

Only two events (the canoeing at Penrith and the shooting at Cecil Park) will be staged at venues more than 20km from downtown Sydney, and both of them will be within a 30km radius. And the vast majority of events will be held at the Olympic Park at Homebush Bay on the Parramatta River.

Six sports - volleyball, weightlifting, fencing, judo, boxing and wrestling - are to be staged at Darling Harbour, the city's town-planning success story which makes Auckland's Viaduct Basin look positively provincial.

Formerly a series of derelict warehouses and idle railyards, the area was transformed into the largest purpose-built urban rede-velopment in the country in time for the Bicentennial Celebrations in 1988.

But they haven't been sitting on their hands since. The development now encircles Cockle Bay. The world's largest Imax screen and indoor theme park Sega World are at one end, along with the Powerhouse Museum (a sort of Motat on steroids). Across the bay in the Harbourside Shopping Centre is Gavala, which brings Aboriginal art to the centre of the city.

Owners Gavin and Alana Rose say that the store is the country's only Aboriginal handcrafts and art store wholly owned and operated by Aborigines. It offers visitors the chance to pick up anything from small (but authentic) souvenirs to full-size canvases by celebrated artists like Michael Nelson Jagemarra.

And then, the eateries. Cockle Bay Wharf, on the city side of Darling Harbour, is home to some of the city's best restaurants, engaged in fierce competition for the diner's dollar.

There's no doubt that Sydney is sprucing itself up for the expected influx of visitors. The visitor before Easter could scarcely move without stumbling over a work crew polishing tiles in the footpaths or con-structing a new motorway link. Plenty of attractions - from the vertiginous climb up the span of the harbour bridge to the Fox Studios attraction where the Royal Easter Show used to be - make Sydney a city you've probably never visited before.

* Peter Calder went to Sydney as a guest of Air New Zealand and the Parkroyal Darling Harbour.