Athens, Sep 03: Athens' chief Olympics organizer has said she was concerned over an outbreak of Salmonella during Olympic test events last month which forced a German rowing team to abandon a world championship.
"I will not stand on the issue of assigning responsibility ... But we must all think of what went wrong," Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki said.

What mattered most was not that the victims were athletes but that "they were guests in our country," she said, promising that organizers would learn from their mistakes.
Food poisoning affected 62 members of the German team before the world junior rowing championships - one of seven events held in August that organizers hoped would help them test venues and other aspects of Olympic planning before next year's games.
A Supreme Court public prosecutor has ordered a judicial investigation into the Salmonella outbreak.



The rowing event was also plagued by gales that swamped many boats, forced the cancellation of one day's competition and shortened courses on two others.



"We had the 'meltemia' (seasonal winds) ... We had the episode with the Salmonella that dominated the headlines before the organizational effort began to show," she said.



But she insisted that overall, the test events were a success.



"All the problems that appeared were valuable for us," Angelopoulos-Daskalaki said. "Test events happen to showcase problems."


Bureau Report