Commonwealth Games article

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http://www.theage.com.au/news/commonwea ... click=true

MCG atmosphere will top Sydney, says Grigorieva
By Len Johnson
October 14, 2005


TATIANA Grigorieva reckons the MCG in Commonwealth Games mode will be a superior venue to what Stadium Australia was for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

A silver medal in front of 110,000 people would take a lot of topping, but Grigorieva says that the closer proximity of the stands at the MCG will make for a better atmosphere.

"In Sydney, because the grandstands weren't sitting on top of each other, it felt like there was more space," Grigorieva said after inspecting the MCG yesterday.

"In terms of capacity, there's not much difference between 100,000 and 85,000, but here the track feels smaller because of the position of the stands."

Grigorieva will be defending her Commonwealth women's pole vault title in Melbourne. Yesterday, she walked around the asphalt base for the jumps apron at the city end of the MCG where the competition will be conducted, envisaging conditions five months hence.

Together with the base for the track, that for the apron had been laid in the previous 24 hours.

To fit into the ground, the track has been pushed up to the fence lines (beyond it at the Richmond end, where rows of seats were removed). Even though the jumps' apron is on the inside of the track, the stands virtually wrap around it.

"We are going to feel the spectators a lot closer to us," Grigorieva said. She said spectators, in turn, would feel more involved in the competition. That would feed back to the competitors.

"I think our performance depends a lot on support we get from the crowd. It definitely helped in Sydney and I'm looking forward to it in Melbourne."

Grigorieva's gold medal in Manchester culminated a sequence of strong performances â€â€