New Delhi:
Hundreds of media persons were taken on a guided tour of the Games Village to get a feel of the state-of-the-art facilities after it was soft-launched on the banks of the river Yamuna here on Thursday.
All the top officials of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee (OC) were present on the occasion, including chairman Suresh Kalmadi, CWG Federation (CGF) chief executive Mike Hooper, vice-chairman Randhir Singh and Secretary General Lalit Bhanot.
Even delegations from Australia, New Zealand, England and Wales were also present, some of whom have already started moving into the village from Thursday.
After going through three layers of security checks, the members of the media, arrived at the Games Village, which will be home to the atheles from 71 countries during the October 3-14 mega-event.
The Village, which is spread over 158.4 acres of land, comprises 34 towers, having two to five BHK flats, a training centre, an international centre and a huge dinning area.
The dinning area, spread over 3,000 square km, has counters serving cuisines of Western, Asian, African, Italian and Indian flavours, besides having separate counters for vegetarian food, salads, juices, snacks and sweet dishes.
Come October 3 and caterers will start serving 36,000 meals per day and Rick Aylett, Director of the Delaware North Companies, the catering company for the CWG, said his team is all prepared for the job.
"It is designed in such a way that it will cater to 2300 people at a time. The athletes would have the option to choose from six different types of cuisines of various countries with 120 dishes on display everyday," Aylett told PTI.
"In all 5,00,000 meals would be served during the whole event. There would be 250 chefs, including five from Malaysia, Africa, London and two from Australia. Hygiene would be the top priority and every food item and water sample would have to go through the layers of food safety monitors," he added. The training area also looks impressive and includes three swimming pools (kids pool, shallow leisure pool and a training pool), an athletic track, a wrestling centre, a weightlifting centre and a gymnasium.
The gymnasium consists of 50 modern equipment and gadgets while the athletic track, with Akshardham temple as its backdrop, is a 400m track of eight lanes. The small stadium has a sitting capacity of 1100.
Just behind the athletic track, there is an artificial lake created for water harvesting.
The spacious flats, three of which were open for the media, seem to have all modern facilities available with nicely done interiors.
The apartments ranging from two to five bedroom units (1400 sq ft to 3,500 sq ft) would accommodate approximately 8,000 athletes and officials during the Games.
Every flat has a fridge, an electric kettle, an iron, an intercom facility, a 32 inch flat screen television set and wifi connection. While, for every two flats there is one washing machine available.
Each room in a flat has two single beds, a side table and a spacious cupboard and it would be shared by two athletes.
The international centre consists of a general store, ice-cream parlour, saloon, post office, tour and travel office, florist to just name a few.
All in all, the almost-ready Games Village can be considered a city in itself.