The newly built athletes' village for this year's Paris Olympics was handed over to organisers on Thursday on schedule, a major milestone in preparations for the sporting extravaganza which begins on July 26.

A symbolic key for the complex in the deprived Seine-Saint-Denis suburb north of Paris, which will house 14,000 people during the Olympics, was symbolically transferred from the Games' infrastructure group to chief organiser Tony Estanguet at a ceremony.