Two members of Australia’s Nine Entertainment Olympic broadcast team were involved in an attempted robbery in Paris, France, on Monday afternoon, it was reported later this week.
The thieves tried to steal the backpacks of technical staff as they were walking to their accommodation.
Nine Entertainment account The couple were walking to their lodgings in Le Bourget, northeast Paris, when the incident occurred when they were attacked by a “group of people”.
The report, which did not name the attackers, said they engaged in a scuffle with the two staff members after failing to grab their backpacks. The incident was reported to French police and the Australian ambassador to Paris, Anna Mears.
“It was clearly a robbery as they were going for a backpack. No weapons were used but there was quite a lot of violence,” Nine entertainment reporter Christine Ahern said. Said in a radio interview on Wednesday.
“Two workers managed to escape but are obviously concerned,” Ms Ahern said. She said the victims were “OK” but “shaken” by the experience.
Nine Entertainment’s director of sports Brent Williams also described the attack as “serious physical in nature” and circulated an internal memo to staff in Paris warning them to be careful when commuting to the network’s broadcast centre.
The assault on the tech worker comes less than 48 hours after a 25-year-old Australian woman was allegedly gang-raped by “five men of African descent” in a nightclub district.
The victim was found “unconscious” outside the kebab shop, with her dress “face down” and partially torn. Australian News.com report.
CCTV footage later emerged showing the terrified woman taking refuge in a kebab shop, where one of the alleged rapists approached her and tapped her on the back, after which a customer inside the shop chased him away.
“It’s a horrific story,” Mears said of the assault. “Obviously, our sympathies go out to the woman involved and we hope she has received appropriate care and support for the trauma she has experienced.”
Australians have been advised to take extreme caution during their stay in Paris, and Australian athletes have been warned not to travel alone or wear their uniforms outside the Olympic Village.
Nine Entertainment report The Australian Olympic Committee reported on Thursday that preparations for the Olympics had been thrown into “chaos” with Australian athletes facing long journeys on buses with no air conditioning or opening windows and being taken to the wrong venues.
Mears calmly described the situation as “less than ideal.”
“It’s disrupting the athletes’ schedules – for example, they are returning to their villages late, which means they don’t have time for physiotherapy and recovery,” she said.
