Athletic Giants Face Downhill Slide
Sun Herald
Sunday March 18, 2001
SYDNEY City Council and insurance giant AMP are locked in an escalating row over the future of the three giant statues on top of the tower at Centrepoint.
Lord Mayor Frank Sartor is adamant that the Olympic landmark of a gymnast, a Paralympic basketballer and a sprinter will be removed within the next four weeks.
But AMP, a Team Millennium Olympic Partner which won approval from Sydney City Council two years ago to install the statues on its tower for a limited period, says it is still uncertain of what to do.
The insurance giant believes that the future of the sculptures may remain up in the air permanently.
The cost of their removal would be considerable.
For more than two years the three sentinels have watched over the city during the infighting, the days of doubts and the eventual Olympic glory.
The installation costs were estimated to have topped $2 million.
Several helicopter flights were needed to position the sculptures, each of which weighs more than four tonnes.
Young Sydney sculptor Dominique Sutton designed the steel figures. The sprinter, in mid- flight, is 16m long. The gymnast's legs alone are 5m long.
Council spokesman Craig Middleton said AMP representatives were told last December that the statues had to go.
``AMP has been told that the statues must come down," Mr Middleton said. ``We believe the removal will take place within the next three to four weeks.
``In fact, we were expecting them to do it this Sunday but no application had been made to the RTA [Roads and Traffic Authority] for the major road closures which need to take place."
Mr Middleton said he was surprised by any suggestion that a possibility existed for the statues to stay put.
At AMP the story was very different. Company spokesman Justin Kirkwood said on Friday that the insurer remained in discussions with the Lord Mayor's office about what to do with its figures.
``As far as we are concerned we are canvassing all possible options with the Lord Mayor's office," he said.
``We conducted focus-group research after the Games which found some people wanted to keep them, others wanted them taken down and relocated."
Few monuments from the Olympics period remain even the Olympic cauldron that Cathy Freeman lit has gone, taken down and stored in a secret location.
The State Government has promised it will return, but not atop the stadium which is mostly empty these days.
There are strong proposals for it to be installed somewhere else at Olympic Park.
HIGH ANXIETY
* The 12m-high statues a female wheelchair basketballer, a female gymnast and a male sprinter were placed on top of the Centrepoint Tower on June 26, 1998.
* A crew of 90 was needed to install the statues. Equipment used for the massive operation included a Kamov KA32 twin-rotor helicopter.
* The statues took seven months to construct in a factory in Bayswater, Melbourne.
* Each statue weighs four tonnes.
© 2001 Sun Herald
