The clock ticked down on the Delhi Commonwealth Games yesterday with signs that conditions in the much-criticised athletes’ village were finally improving as hundreds of competitors arrived.

Australia, one of the countries that had slammed the village last week, said organisers were working hard to improve the state of facilities just five days before the start of the event.

“It’s pretty good,” Lynsey Armitage, a member of the Australian lawn bowls team, said.

“I’ve been here for the last two days. I feel completely safe and secure.”

South Africa too said the first contingent from its 150-strong squad moved into the village yesterday after the residential zone was passed as fit by the team leader.

“The athletes are very happy with the reception they’ve got so far,” spokesman Mark Keohane told AFP, referring to the first batch of competitors who arrived Monday and spent their first night in a hotel.

However, there was more bad news for the athletics competition, which has already been hit by pull-outs and no-shows from the biggest crowd-pullers such as Usain Bolt.

Caster Semenya, the South African 800-metre world champion, was expected to lend some star-power to the Games’ line-up, but her coach said she was struggling with a back injury and was pulling out.

The multi-sport event, which opens on Sunday, had teetered on the brink of collapse last week when some nations threatened to pull out amid worries about security and the standard of accommodation and venues.

An army of manual workers has been drafted in to tackle filthy apartments and builders’ rubbish at the village and organisers have promised that all the accommodation will be finished by today.

Tens of thousands of paramilitary troops and police are deployed in India’s capital carrying out armed foot patrols and manning bunkers amid a huge security operation at the Games.

With the opening ceremony looming, 17,000 paramilitary troopers are on duty reinforcing 80,000 city police.

Sharelle McMahon, a Commonwealth Games veteran who first competed in the 1998 Games in Kuala Lumpur, said she was surprised by the number of police armed with machine guns but was still optimistic about the event.

“It is certainly a different experience. We were really excited last night to arrive here,” the 32-year-old captain of Australia’s netball team told AFP.

About 850 athletes and support staff arrived at the village yesterday, including large teams from Malaysia and Jamaica.

The event, often known as the “friendly games”, includes teams from some of the world’s smallest territories such as Norfolk Island, which sits in the Pacific Ocean 1,600 kilometres northeast of Sydney.

“Our whole island of 1,500 people could eat in the canteen together,” Jo Snell, an archer from Norfolk Island, said.