Sports

One year countdown to Olympics at Beijing
by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu

Wednesday, as the clock hit 8 PM, Bejing's Tiananmen Square bursted in celebration as the twelve-month countdown to the 2008 Olympics began. There was everything from fireworks, pop singers who belted out a theme song, dancers and even politicians who spoke of the event that will aid China in it's rising economic and political clout. Although everything is hoped to go well, Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, is concerned about Beijings air that could postpone some events. "It would not be necessary for all sports, sports with short durations would not be a problem. But definitely the endurance sports like the cycling race where you have to compete for six hours, these are examples of competitions that might be postponed or delayed to another day" said Rogge. Besides these issues he added that Chinese organizers worked "extremely hard to give Beijing an Olympic shape". Almost all of the venues are succesfully on their way, with only a part of the $40 billion of the total sum allocated for the refitting of Beijing, being spent. To try and clean up the air, Beijing authorities have spent a lot of money on moving factories and refineries out of the city, in order to ensure a clean air for the 17-day event, and plan to keep 1 million of the city's 3.3 million vehicles off the road, to achieve better results. Due to the 550,000 visitors and about 22,000 accredited media expected in Beijing, image is very important, so certain campaigns against old habits like spitting in public, litterig and jumping ahead in line are being organized in order to improve the overall behaviour of Chinese citizens. "Great achievement is always accompanied by great challenges," said Jiang Xiaoyu, an organizing committee executive vice president. The biggest security threat of all might not come from al-Qaida, but from protesters who might seek to highlight causes like labor rights, or authonomy for Tibetans, or China's role in the Darfus crisis.

by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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posted by Blog TechSource @ 1:45 PM