Anti-terror exercise wrecks Sydney Olympics venue

One of the venues for this year's Sydney Olympics has been left in partial ruin after an Australian Defence Force team, conducting a mock anti-terrorism exercise, took to their job like aspiring gold-medal wreckers.

Doors were kicked down, windows smashed, walls flattened and carpets damaged as the antiterrorist squad stormed through the new Aquilina softball stadium, leaving it looking much like the Hogan Stand after the cranes had moved in. The bill for damage is estimated at tens of thousands of dollars.

A spokesman said the crack force had been given permission to conduct the hostage-recovery exercise, and the £17 million stadium would be restored to its original glory "by the close of business" today.

"We use purpose-built buildings but we needed to offer something that the troops hadn't seen before," the spokesman said. "This sort of training is the most sophisticated that can be undertaken. It's a dangerous job." However, the exercise did not please some local residents, who first knew about it when they observed Black Hawk helicopters swarming in the sky for the mock attack. The defence spokesman said the force had tried to notify the residents about the exercise but "could not letter-box all local areas".

"We have to think in terms of realism," he said. "It's no good saying `There's a door, we would normally break it down but on this occasion we'll just put a cross on it and pretend we've done it'. We have to do these things for real."

Not wishing to appear bent on destruction, a Defence Force spokesman said later a repair team was busy rebuilding the site. The cost of repairs was incorporated into the overall cost of the exercise, which will come out of the New South Wales state budget, a spokeswoman added. "For every exercise of this nature there is a damage control team always available."

Elite forces have staged counter-terrorist exercises throughout Sydney for the last month. So far, all the other Olympic venues remain intact.

Such exercises are not unique. In the early 1980s, a special police unit practising the rescue of a hypothetical kidnapped foreign dignitary burst into a room in Melbourne's Sheraton hotel, confronted the terrified occupants and dragged the man away. The only problem was, they stormed the wrong room, and had "rescued" an innocent tourist.