Olympics from the Goodyear blimp - a view worthy of the gods

The Olympics' eye in the sky, the Goodyear blimp is everywhere, circling ponderously above the action almost every time you look up.

But from where I'm sitting, I can't see it. All I can see, belted into my seat in the small gondola which hangs from its 2000 cu m bulk, is Olympic Park, silver and clean and dressed in the beauty of Sunday morning, 500m below.

Away to the east, a jetliner streaks between the harbour bridge and Centrepoint tower, a painted ship upon a painted ocean of sky. The clouds, the first I have seen in two weeks here, make a backdrop Michelangelo might have painted and shafts of sunlight connect earth and heaven.

From this height, patterns of human movement, logical if not orderly on the ground, become orderly but often incomprehensible.

"What's that long concrete strip with the irregular pattern of black squares on it?" I wonder through the headset microphone to John McGuirk, the genial pilot who is the only other person on board.

He stares at it for a long time - long enough for me to be wondering whether I should suggest he stare straight ahead - before admitting he doesn't know.

But as we circle so close to ground that it's tempting to reach out and pick things up, everything looks familiar, but as though seen for the first time.

In the hockey stadium, they're taking a corner and although I can't pick out the ball, I can easily see from the body language of the teams that the shot missed. In Stadium Australia, the hammer throw is in progress. The movement of the judges across the green baize of the field tells me where the throw has landed, but up here you can't hear the roar of the crowd, even when John McGuirk shuts down the two Limbach L-2000 68 hp engines and we float in eerie, perfect silence.

Getting aboard the blimp was, the company's Sydney office told me, a no-no. Requests came from journalists at the rate of about a dozen an hour. They could e-mail me information, but I would just have to imagine Olympic city from the air.

But miraculous coincidences happen at 3 am in bars. My colleague Peter Jessup found himself buying a beer for Mike Nerandzic, the chief pilot of the blimp they call "The Spirit of the South Pacific" and he said he'd be happy to welcome one of us aboard.

Promises are easily made in the small hours and as easily forgotten the next day but Mike, who kept ringing to reassure me he hadn't forgotten, was as good as his word and on Saturday morning I found myself clutching the seat edge as we took off, at what seemed like a perilously steep angle, from a rough patch of waste ground near Rookwood, only a few hundred metres from the Olympic precinct.

The flight is smooth in this gentle giant, although McGuirk admits that "it can get a bit interesting in strong winds, it can be a handful." And the speed, a leisurely 35 knots, means that the ground falls behind at what seems like walking pace.

They call it the Goodyear blimp, but there's no sign of the name of the world's biggest tyre manufacturer. On one side of its 14m-high balloon, which is fashioned from mylar and polyester coated with a tedlar laminate, is "G'day" and on the other "Good luck." IOC "clean Games" guidelines forbid corporate branding "at, near or above" Olympic venues (though Nike's tick and adidas' three stripes are plainly in evidence on athletes' uniforms).

But there's no denying that the blimp, corporate brand or no, does wonders for Goodyear's visibility.

Goodyear built its first blimp, a helium-filled airship called the Pilgrim, in 1925. Other ships followed, most named after winners of the America's Cup yacht race because of the vision of Goodyear's chairman at the time, Paul Litchfield, who saw blimps as giant sailing ships of the sky.

Goodyear-built airships performed surveillance duties for the US Army and Navy. Some could stay aloft for more than a week at a time. In fact, a Goodyear-built ZPG-2 called the Snow Bird still holds the flight endurance record of 11 days in flight. In March 1957, it flew from the United States to Europe and Africa and back - without landing or refuelling.

Today, Goodyear operates three blimps in the United States, two in Europe, one in South America and one in Australia.

For most of the Olympics, the $US5 million ($12 million) blimp (it's technically a iarship; the name "blimp" is reputed to have come from an English pilot's imitation of the sound the balloon made when flicked with a finger) is a vital part of the television coverage. A gyro-stabilised aerial camera with a zoom lens powerful enough to read the number plate on a car from more than 500m provides perspectives on events - particularly long-distance outdoor contests such as the triathlon - which even the most attentive earthbound spectator could never hope to see.

At last, and all too soon, we are heading for earth where the ground crew form a V to guide us in, head to wind. Sudden wind direction changes and updrafts from the warm ground make it a knuckle-whitening affair (and the pilot has the decency to wait until later before admitting he'd had a few anxious moments) and it takes three attempts to bring it down.

But it's been an hour of sheer magic and an angel's view of the Olympics which I won't soon forget.