IT STANDS more than 230ft high, has 91,000 seats and cost £250 million – yet yesterday the "Bird's Nest" stadium, newly-built icon of the Beijing Olympics, was scarcely visible from half a mile away because of pollution.
International media gained access to the structure for the first time yesterday and it will admit the first paying customers tomorrow.
Beijing organisers have said stringent pollution controls will go into effect no later than 20 July. This mea
ns closing cement factories and foundries, halting hundreds of building projects and banning about half of Beijing's 3.3 million vehicles.
The International Olympic Committee has said it will postpone outdoor endurance events if air quality is poor, and Jacques Rogge, its president, has acknowledged that athletes' performances might be "slightly reduced" because of pollution.
Ethiopia's Haile Gebrselassie, who holds the world marathon record, said last month he would not run in Beijing on health fears, while Australia is to test all its team members for asthma before leaving for the Games.
Yesterday, with 114 days to go until the opening ceremony, finishing touches were still being applied to the stadium, with lines being painted on the running track and some seats yet to be fixed in place.
Workers and a large band of volunteers were reluctant to talk to the media, but several said they thought the structure was "amazing".
From the outside, the stadium overwhelms everything else, even the neighbouring Water Cube swimming venue.
Beijing police have cracked down on cars stopping for people to take photographs. Curious pedestrians still line a 12ft-high wire fence to have a look.
"When I first saw the stadium, I didn't know what it was," said Duan Jingxuan, who was landscaping a pine forest bordering a pond near the stadium. Like thousands of migrant workers who have come to Beijing to build Olympic venues, Duan earns about £76 a month and sends most of it home to his family in central China.
"I'm proud to work here and it shows China is getting richer," he said.
However, Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist who was a consultant on the project, has criticised the stadium. He has likened it to a "fake smile" designed to hide social and political problems.
From the inside, the interwoven steel structure that gives the stadium its nickname is largely hidden by a membrane that will keep the rain off many of the seats and prevent unsightly shadows ruining television pictures on sunny days.
The original roof was cut out of plans in 2004 as a cost-cutting measure and the Beijing meteorological office is experimenting with rain-prevention measures in case the weather spoils the opening ceremony.
The stadium should have been finished along with the other venues by the end of 2007, but the completion date was first postponed to the end of March and then to the middle of April.
Organisers said the complexity of preparing the stadium for what is expected to be a lavish opening ceremony on 8 August was responsible for the delays.
It was the only significant delay in a building programme that presented a clear contrast with Athens 2004, where the last licks of paint were being applied only days before the Games began.
There was no sign of where the Olympic cauldron will be placed. That, along with details of the opening ceremony, are being kept secret.
Officials confirmed in January that two workers had died during construction of the stadium, denying media reports of at least ten fatalities.
The first event to take place at the stadium is the IAAF men's 20km walking event tomorrow. Sunday's Good Luck Beijing marathon will also finish at the Bird's Nest. An athletics event from 22-25 May will be the first thorough test of the stadium's ability to host top-level track-and-field events.
After the Games, an auction will be held for naming rights, that could result in a foreign company attaching its brand to the stadium.
In the past month, Beijing's plans to use the Olympics as a public-relations coup have been sullied by protests along the Olympic torch relay route.
Pro-Tibet and human-rights demonstrators have focused world attention on China's policies.
Protesters are also expected to stage demonstrations during the Games, testing China's ability to portray itself as a modern, sophisticated nation, despite spending about £20 billion to remake the capital into a modern, skyscraper-filled city.
But organisers, such as Liang Gang, the deputy press manager for the venue, are confident that everything will fall into place once the Games begin.
"Here in the stadium, they (the athletes] will concentrate on the competition, on the basic things of sports and not the other things," he said.
China's icon of steelENVISAGED as the iconic centrepiece of the Beijing Olympics, the "Bird's Nest" stadium is an architectural expression of China's pride and burgeoning confidence.
Although its distinctive twisted steel exterior sprang from the minds of fêted European architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, some feel the Swiss have successfully put a modern twist on local artistic tradition.
The army of mostly migrant construction workers, who built the arena in 52 months, were given a clear indication of the importance of the £250 million project.
"You have written a brilliant page in China's architectural history," the president, Hu Jintao, told them during a visit to the site in 2006.
After winning the right to host the Games, China quickly made clear it would be looking to make a statement with its showpiece stadium. Designs were solicited, and the 13 delivered in March 2003 included Herzog and de Meuron's proposal.
Chinese architect Li Xinggang, who worked with them, said practical matters were important. "It was able to offer spectators the best balance of distance and clear view," he said. "It was the best form for a sporting venue."
The full article contains 988 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
