Venues for the modern Olympic games share a common theme. They typically feature unique appearances, high costs, and symbolic meaning. As a result, a legacy is being realized in the host cities years after the Games end.
Sydney's Olympic Park is still a key sporting, entertainment and business venue in Australia's largest city. The Sydney Olympic Park Authority says the venue is expected to have clocked up 10 million visits to the site by the end of 2010.
Sydney's former Olympic venue currently hosts around 5,000 events per year, ranging from small corporate functions to international sporting matches. The main Olympic stadium was downsized after the games so it could continue to host large sports events.
Michael Knight, Chairman of Sydney Olympic Park Auhority, said, "We tried to plan our venues in a way where the post-games use was built in from the beginning. So that we didn't just build a stadium for the games, in fact we built it at 115,000 (capacity) for the games, and pulled it back to around 80,000 afterwards. We didn't build a whole lot of sports halls in isolation, we built them as part of the new show ground that you see behind us here."
