Olympic Village faces overcrowding

One of the thousands of rooms in the Olympic Village

Olympic athletes could be forced to sleep three to a room following an unexpected increase in the number of competitors arriving for the Games.

Olympic Village organisers have said they estimated the village at Homebush would have to cope with an extra 500 people above the 15,000-plus planned for the Games.

Village organisers told a meeting of team chiefs they would have to move extra beds into rooms to cope with the demand.

Organisers said the higher than expected number of athletes meeting qualifying standards set by the 28 different sports has caused the problem.

"More athletes have qualified than anticipated," village manager Maurice Holland said.

"We have 15,750 beds in the village. We were seeing a situation where we had more athletes than beds. But the estimates yesterday were down.

"If the trend continues, we would probably even out between 400 and 500 more than would be anticipated."

Holland estimated that, at the most, any increase would mean an average of one extra bed per dwelling.