NZ Games bodies waiting, watching

Leaders of New Zealand sports bodies sending athletes to next month's Commonwealth Games are adopting a wait and see attitude after New Zealand team chef de mission Dave Currie today expressed fears the event might not take place because of the state of unpreparedness of host city New Delhi.

Athletics NZ chief executive Scott Newman, Swimming NZ chief executive Mike Byrne, NZ shooting team coach Gavin Paton, and Bowls NZ chief executive Kerry Clark told NZPA today they were awaiting advice from the New Zealand Olympic Committee, whose board is to meet Friday to assess the preparedness of the Indian capital to hold a safe and secure event.

However, Swimming NZ are already looking at contingency plans.

"We've arranged with the other Commonwealth countries to have a single event, which will be a swimming event, which any one of three countries could host at this stage," general performance manager Jan Cameron told 3 News tonight.

Clark, who is also the technical delegate for the games bowls competition, said he was not surprised to hear of the issues emerging from New Delhi at the 11th hour, aptly described by Currie today as "two seconds to midnight, really".

"I was there in April for the bowls test event and New Delhi was like a construction site and that has been an ongoing thing, there is no doubt about that," Clark said.

There was an enormous amount of work to be done not only at venue and village levels but also in terms of highways, roads and other metro issues.

"There was a whole lot of things going on at the same time. You would have to be an optimistic individual to say this would be finished by the end of September or middle of August or whatever.

"From where we are, we got to appreciate as well that we are going to a games in a developing country and it is not going to be as plain sailing as it might be in other places.

"But in saying that, we have to be guided by the people on the ground looking at it from the big picture side.

"I can talk from the bowls venue point of view and say we can run this event but that doesn't apply to anything else.

"There is no one in our lot who are saying because of what's happened in the last 24 or 48 hours `we want to rethink our situation'.

"The athletes have put in the effort to be prepared and they want to be there," Clark added.

Byrne said from swimming's point of view, "we cant afford to do anything else except proceed full steam ahead as if the Games are still going to take place".

Newman said he would expect every sports body sending athletes to the games to have a similar reaction to ongoing events in New Delhi.

"At this stage it sounds like another hiccup. We have confidence in the NZOC and NZ Government to make a right decision on our behalf and we'll wait until Friday for that to come through.

"I wouldn't say there are any great fears or concerns yet."

Paton he things were up in the air in the moment and he was going ahead with plans "until we hear differently as we don't know that much".

A Netball NZ spokeswoman said they would not be making any comment or decisions until after they had heard back from the NZOC's representatives on the ground in India.

- NZPA