CHINA: OLYMPIC GAMES - The head of International Olympic Coordination Commission Hein Verbruggen visits venues for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Record ID: 331868

  • Title: CHINA: OLYMPIC GAMES - The head of International Olympic Coordination Commission Hein Verbruggen visits venues for the 2008 Olympic Games.
  • Date: 17th May 2006
  • Summary: SEMI CLOSE UP: GUARD WATCHING
  • Embargoed: 1st June 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: China
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVA7YGUVEK70LE91GDLJPND8WTMZ
  • Story Text: The Coordination Commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the Beijing 2008 Games opened its sixth plenary session in Beijing on Tuesday (May 16), while the head of Commission Hein Verbruggen visited venues where he inspected construction work in progress.
    The three-day meeting is aimed at getting the IOC updated on Beijing's Olympic preparations to date. The Coordination Committee will discuss media and medical services, security, ceremonies, and completion schedule.
    Construction of the some venues for the 2008 Games has hit problems but organisers are confident they will still be delivered on schedule at the end of next year.
    Hein Verbruggen was equally impressed after touring construction sites on Tuesday (May 16).
    "It's marvellous, marvellous. Especially I think for the athletes, it'll be wonderful", he said.
    Twenty of the 31 competition venues in Beijing are under construction with work well underway on the centrepiece National Stadium and the revolutionary Aquatics centre.
    Construction managers deny that steel shortages --- 110,000 tonnes are required for the National Stadium alone -- were delaying the project and say the venues would be delivered on time.
    Most of the hollow steel trusses that will hold in place the "Bird's Nest" roof of the 3.03 billion yuan ($377.8 million) National Stadium are already clinging to the side of the concrete structure. Once the remaining six trusses are in place, the complicated task of fitting the interlocking pieces together, forming a dramatic twisting superstructure atop the venue, will begin.
    The equally ambitious 1.02 billion yuan Aquatic centre is less recognisable with only a skeleton of the honeycomb steel structure visible through the scaffolding enshrouding a huge rectangular block. Eventually some of the 17,000 workers currently employed on the Beijing projects will stretch a membrane over the whole of the exterior of the building giving a final effect of water flowing down the walls.
    Keeping water out of the National Stadium for the opening ceremony is exercising minds among organisers after they decided last year to abandon plans for a retractable roof for cost reasons.
    The Chinese government is pumping a huge amount of money into the 2008 Olympics, seen as a badge of legitimacy for the ruling Communist Party and a yardstick by which the world will judge three decades of economic reforms. Organisers have scaled back plans for some Games venues, but the budget for venue construction still stands at around $2 billion.
    By 2008, Beijing expects to have spent a total of nearly $40 billion on the Olympics, most of which will go to building new roads and subway lines and improving the city's power grid and environment.
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