(ATR) With 57 days to go, the site for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest is preparing to become one of the busiest and noisiest venues for the European Games.
Located in on a peninsula jutting out into the Bay of Baku in the Caspian Sea, the Crystal Hall is this week hosting one of the two final test events for this summer’s European Olympic Committees showpiece.
The Great Silk Way Elite Boxing Tournament runs until Sunday at the multipurpose venue, which is about 20 minutes drive from the Olympic Village.
Just down the road, the Azerbaijan Wrestling Federation Cup, an international freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling tournament among cadet and junior age groups, takes place April 16-19 at the renovated Heydar Aliyev Arena.
Andrew Smyth, a venue manager at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and the London Olympics, is charged with ensuring the Crystal Hall – to be broken into three venues for Baku 2015 – is ready to host volleyball, boxing, karate, taekwondo and fencing.
For the boxing test event, capacity has been capped at 500; at Games-time, it will be able to accommodate 2,000 spectators.
So far, so good for Smyth and his team. There have been no major glitches at the boxing tune-up, which features around 80 boxers competing in 10 men’s and five women’s weight categories.
Extra seats, a video screen and scoreboard and an acoustic curtain will go in as part of the European Games overlay for 11 days of boxing.
With some great Azerbaijani medal hopefuls, he believes the martial arts-loving locals will raise the roof at Baku 2015.
Recalling the home crowd’s reaction to Team GB’s medal haul at the London Olympics, Smyth tells Around the Rings: "If we get Azerbaijanis winning medals and doing well in boxing, volleyball but also in karate, taekwondo and fencing,then that will naturally create the crowds and the buzz and everything is a plus from there.
"I would deem that a success," added the former deputy venue general manager at Scotland’s Hampden Park, site of the Commonwealth Games athletics and closing ceremony last summer.
His main focus from now to the June 12 opening ceremony is the Baku 2015overlay. Smyth calls it a "construction site getting ready for Games in June," something that was "made that clear to stakeholders in test events."
Lighting and rigging is going up in the 4,000-capacity hall for European Games volleyball. Thanks to growing interest in a professional women’s volleyball league in Azerbaijan, he expects the sport to have a popular following at Baku 2015.
The field of play venue operations test for volleyball takes place in May. As with other venue tests for the Games, he said: "What we want from this is to test all those flows, to make sure that from drop off point to competition back through the I [interview] Zone athletes have a good experience."
Smyth said the other main challenge between now and the curtain-raiser was in building a team and ensuring venue staff and volunteers are trained so they can work at future major sports events in Baku when the European Games circus has left town.
"My team is around 20 percent expatriates and 80 percent local staff, some in their first job in events. A big part is trauining them to iron out the wrinkles [from the test event] so when we start the first day of competition they know exactly what to do," Smyth said.
"We don’t want it to be run by the expatriates. We want to be able to leave here and transfer that knowledge. They have events like the Islamic Games, Formula 1 and Euro 2020 and Olympic prospects so they will have people who have ‘been there and done that.'"
Apart from Azerbaijanis getting behind their own Games, one of his other hopes is that the time and money invested in training up venue staff pays off.
Success, he said, would also be "If I can leave here knowing that the six of seven guys under me can firstly go on and continue in this industry, and secondly continue in Azerbaijan," he added.
Reported by Mark Bisson
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