THE gates to the Glasgow 2014 Athletes' Village in the east end of the city are unimposing, unspectacular appendages.
In fact, there should really be a set of wardrobe doors leading to an elite athlete version of Narnia.
Yesterday was the media's first peek into the Athletes' Village since the complex was completed and handed over to the Glasgow 2014 Organising Committee. While it looked spectacular fully finished, it is just a shadow of what it will be when it is full to the brim with 6500 athletes and support staff.
London 2012 Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill and Eilidh Child, the Scottish Commonwealth silver medallist, were given a guided tour of the Village, although Ennis-Hill will not be competing in Glasgow this summer. Instead, she will looking after her new-born baby. For Child however, one of the Faces of the Games, the Athletes' Village is one of the few places where she will be able to seek solace from the madness of a home Games.
Invariably, Athletes' Villages have something of a sacred quality to them; it provides an escape from the media's incessant, and occasionally daft, questioning, grants shelter from the gaze of the public and, above all, it is one of the most fun places you can live, albeit for just a few weeks at a time.
The Glasgow 2014 Village possesses some of the homogenous qualities that accompany every one of these extraordinary constructions - countless identical bedrooms, a colossal food hall and the usual bits and bobs that adorn a normal high street. In comparison to the Olympic Village in London, which had rows and rows of high-rise flats, Glasgow's Village is a 35-hectare estate full of houses, very similar to that at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
The Australian Village was, by general consensus, the best Commonwealth Village to date. Glasgow 2014 is mounting a strong challenge, though.
Child will have the weight of a nation on her shoulders during the Games this summer, just as Ennis-Hill did in London. The pair shared an apartment at those Olympics and Child admits that witnessing Ennis-Hill cope successfully with that crushing pressure will be of huge benefit this summer.
"You think that these people are superstars and don't get nervous but it was reassuring to see that she was and that's okay," said Child. "Seeing her deal with it will definitely help me cope."
Ennis-Hill was suitably impressed with what she saw yesterday, saying "It's got that lovely new feel to it. It's big but you're never walking too far so it's going to be really special once it's full."
The completion of the 2014 Athletes' Village illustrates just how close the Glasgow Commonwealth Games is to kicking-off. It was peaceful yesterday but in a few months it will be where the athletes prepare, celebrate their victories and cry over their failures. It is a place that few people experience, but it is undoubtedly the heart of the Games.
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