This Sporting Life: Bedding in at Bird's Nest has shown Games stadium is no flight of fancy

IN JUST 73 days time, the eyes of the sporting world will fall on a 'Bird's Nest'. That is the nickname handed down to Beijing's National Stadium, home of the Olympic opening ceremony and athletics events and which successfully passed its first major test at the weekend by staging the China Athletics Open.

Its stunning facade, the brainchild of Swiss-based architect Jacques Herzog, is a modern wonder. With 36 kilometres of steel twisting and swishing into a 45,000-tonne building, it is what China can only hope becomes the emblematic image of the Games, supplanting the current front-runner – the chaotic political protests surrounding the relay of the Olympic flame from Athens.

The building process began on Christmas Eve 2003 but its completion came at a price exceeding the £250m bill; six workers died from on-site accidents during construction that gathered in haste as deadlines loomed.

One of the most important dates was always going to be the first full-scale event to be held in the 91,000-seat stadium. Only 45,000 were allowed in for the China Athletics Open, but it was still full to its reduced capacity for all four days of action.

The highlight came on Saturday, when Liu Xiang, the world record holder for the 110m hurdles, eased to victory in a time of 13.18 seconds, some way off his best mark of 12.88sec. Come August, Liu will be to Beijing and China what Carl Lewis was to Los Angeles and the USA in 1984, what Cathy Freeman was to Sydney and Australia in 2000; the home hero who must deliver a gold medal. No longer will he be just a hurdler, he will become the embodiment of a nation's sporting, economic and political prowess.

"I don't really like sport," said 22-year-old Beijing student Li Lin. "But I wanted to see Liu Xiang run." And this in a race that was a foregone conclusion, more than two months before Olympic gold could be secured.

"Today the atmosphere was very good," said Liu. "Although it was a test event, I gave it 100 per cent. I hope the Bird's Nest will be the place where my second dream begins."

Anna Legnani, the International Association of Athletics Federations deputy director of communications, hailed the stadium as "a brilliant facility, not only from the architectural point of view". But one drawback is that, due to escalating costs, the planned roof was never put on, leaving spectators open to the elements. Rain is common in Beijing in August, and the long-range forecast is not optimistic for the opening ceremony on 8 August.

Still, it is widely thought that the stadium knocks spots off the athletics venue for London 2012, and at around half that site's current projected cost of £469m. One architecture critic has already commented that, in the future, historians will see the two stadiums as a "cunning indicator of the decline of the West and the rise of the East".

All that is left is for Liu Xiang to provide it with its defining athletic moment come August.