With the Beijing Olympic Games 239 days away, BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad) celebrates its sixth birthday.

Liu Jingmin, BOCOG executive vice-president, said, ‘In the beginning, BOCOG had less than 100 staff members, but with the growing workload, we had to move twice, first from Xinqiao Hotel to a more spacious place — Qinglan Plaza in September 2002.’

On July 13, 2002, the first anniversary of Beijing’s bid victory,BOCOG officially published the Beijing Olympic Action Plan, which outlined the promises made in the bid document.

The plan covered such areas as general strategy, the construction of competition venues and related facilities, an ecological environment and city infrastructure, the social environment, and logistics.

In the first three years, BOCOG drew up and implemented a series of plans, unveiled the Olympic emblem of a ‘Chinese Seal, Dancing Beijing,’ dislosed the theme slogan of ‘One World One Dream,’ and revealed the five Fuwa mascots.

From 2003 to 2005, extensive work was done to draw up the competition schedule of the Beijing Olympics. The opening and closing ceremonies, ticket sales, the torch relay and other matters were also put on BOCOG’s agenda.

During this period, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) increased guidance regarding Olympic preparations.

In January of 2006, BOCOG moved again to a new but this time permanent place — the Olympic Tower, designated as the command center of the Olympics in 2008. The body of BOCOG expanded to over 20 departments.

2006 saw attention focused on the core of the Olympics, namely the sport competitions.

BOCOG oversaw the progress of the Olympic venues, the finalization of the sports schedule, ticket sales, recruitment of volunteers, and the staging of Good Luck Beijing sport events to test the venues’ functions and the organizers’ capabilities.
Source: Beijing 2008

There will be a lot of people at the Olympic Games — seven million of them from beginning to end.

Inevitably there are black market tickets for the Games and they are already being sold illegally (perhaps that is too strong a word for there is no law against it) on the internet.

The great mistake was allowing individuals to buy 50 tickets at a time and they are cashing in by selling them for more than 10 times their face value.

Beijing’s Olympic Committee (BOCOG) allows tickets to be transferred between users, but not for profit. Which is whistling in the wind unless there is law to enforce it.

More than 1.5 million tickets were allocated in the first round of ticket sales, which was only open to people living in mainland China.

Tickets for the opening ceremony on 8 August are on sale on the Internet for as much as 39,000 yuan ($5,270). Their face value is just RMB3,000.

Individuals who have been allocated tickets will not be given them until next summer, but this has not stopped people selling them beforehand.

Some buyers and sellers are signing contracts that promise tickets will be handed over immediately after they are issued.

These sales are being carried out despite a ban on speculation. There was a similar ban in Athens in 2004 and Sydney in 2000.

The number any individual can buy in the second round is being reduced to just eight tickets. Rong Jun, director of BOCOG Ticketing Center, and shown here, said they reduced the number of tickets each person can buy to give more people the chance to watch an Olympic event.
Source: BBC

BOCOG Media Operations Department Director Sun Weijia, shown here, said BOCOG will provide virtual intranet transmission services for the media covering the Beijing Olympic Games.

In addition, he said, wireless wide-band technology will also be put to use during the Olympic Games. Journalists will thus be able to send their reports to their headquarters directly from the stands without being wired up to a television. Only a journalist will wholly realize what a blessing this is.

The service will be linked with the Olympic INFO system to support download so that facts can be cross-checked before the story is filed.

In one sense BOCOG will provide the same service platform for the media as the previous Olympic Games. However, the media will be accessing services of much, much higher levels as a result of rapid development of net communication technology.

BOCOG fully studied the practice of the previous Olympic Games, and sent its staff to experience media operations during the Athens and Turin Olympic Games. And then took it all several steps further.

BOCOG has hired a considerable number of foreign specialists in media operations. About 5% of the 500 people involved in media operations are foreigners, and some 10% of the 2,000 volunteers are foreigners.

The Beijing Olympics are expected to attract 21,600 accredited media from all over the world.
Source: Beijing 2008

The ‘Mini-Olympics’ has been named one of the successful models of China’s ongoing Olympic education program, according to Beijing Games organizers.

The event is the brainchild of two Chinese sports researchers and is aimed at teaching young children about Olympic sports by using rubber discusses and plastic javelins. (This may be more important that you think. The sports master in my school was pinned through his foot to the turf with a carelessly hurled javelin. He was not best pleased.)

The scheme is one of the highlights of the program, now in its second year.

Launched in December 2005, the Beijing Olympic education program aims to promote the Olympic Movement among 400 million young Chinese in over 400,000 schools both before and after the Beijing Games.

Working closely with China’s Ministry of Education, BOCOG has set up 556 ‘Olympic Education Model Schools’ nationwide, 200 of which are in Beijing.

Schools have held speech, writing and painting contests, as well as Olympic knowledge contests, to involve more students, said officials.

So far, BOCOG has offered more than 1.1 million Olympics-themed textbooks nationwide for students in middle, elementary, vocational, special and international schools.

The Heart-to-Heart Partnership program, which was created as part of the education program in December 2006, provides opportunities to more than 200 elementary and middle schools based in Beijing to partner with sister schools and athletes in any country represented by a National Olympic Committee.
Source: China Daily

To avoid doping problems traditional Chinese herbal medicine will not be used to treat athletes during the Olympics. This came from an official with the Beijing Organizing Committee of Olympic Games (BOCOG).

Dai Jianping, deputy director of the BOCOG’s service department, said at an international medical forum: ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean herbal medicine contains provocative substances. As other Olympic host countries haven’t used it before, we choose not to use it too.’

As a big international event, the Beijing Olympics will follow international medical service standards. However, non-drug traditional Chinese treatments, such as acupuncture, cupping and massage, will be used in the Games.

He also said at the forum that a poly-clinic will be constructed inside the athlete’s village, providing medical services for some 16,000 athletes from all over the world in 2008.

Dai Jianping said the clinic will be able to provide magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), dental service and physical therapy to athletes who come across health problems during the Olympics — ‘It has a 24-hour working schedule, and all the services are for free as Beijing promised to the International Olympic Committee.’

The 3,000-square-meter poly-clinic, which will finish construction by the end of April 2008, will ease the medical service pressure of hospitals which will still provide normal service to local people during the big event.

A total of 28 dedicated hospitals, 219 venue medical stations and ambulance stations will be used in the health care services in 2008, and 3,000 medical volunteers, mostly students from medical colleges and institutions, will be trained to provide medical care along with professional doctors and nurses.
Source: China View