Sydney polls apart

Crowds are flocking to the Olympics every day

By Paul Cohen, Sydney

It is now official. The Olympics are gripping Australia and the trains are running on time.

A poll of Australians has found that where there was doubt there is now endorsement in a near universal embracing of the Games.

One thing is for sure, the Olympics has left virtually no-one in the host nation untouched.

According to the nationwide survey a staggering 89 per cent of Australians watched the opening ceremony while only three per cent of the population has not tuned into coverage of the Olympics at some stage.

But it is not just armchair viewers who have seen the Olympics in their millions.

Success

Taking into account the torch relay, almost a third of Australians had seen an Olympic event with the figure up to 40 per cent in the state of New South Wales where Sydney lies.

Australian success has in no small measure drawn in the public but even the opening ceremony was almost universally lauded as a huge success with only 11 per cent saying it was anything less than "good".

Cathy Freeman's gold medal winning run in the 400m was unsurprisingly the hit of the Games for the host nation.

The 8,305,000 viewers made it the third most watched event in the history of Australian television.

Only the opening ceremony and coverage of Diana, Princess of Wales' funeral have drawn bigger audiences.

SOCOG

The feel-good factor has benefited Australian Games' organisers SOCOG whose approval rating six weeks ago was as low as 26 per cent but which has tripled since the Olympics began.

But the most welcoming statistic for Sydney must have been the huge thumbs-up for the transport system which has had to move around 400,000 people a day to Olympic Park alone.

Despite fears of the network buckling under the massive weight of numbers, 72 per cent of those asked said it had been good or very good.

After the debacle at Atlanta that is no mean feat.

The national poll surveyed the views of 2063 people over the second weekend of the Games.