Fifth IOC/BOCOG press conference

IOC/BOCOG briefing: Audience attendance rate exceeds 60%

Date/Time: 12:00 a.m., Wednesday, August 13

Venue: Main Press Conference (MPC)

Sun Weide

Good morning everyone, welcome to BOCOG-IOC joint press briefing. With us today are, from the side of BOCOG, Mr. Wang Wei, executive vice president and secretary general of BOCOG, Liu Shaowu, director of BOCOG Security Department, from IOC we are pleased to have Gilbert Felli, IOC's Olympic Games executive director.

Giselle Davies

First of all, I would like to give the floor to Wang Wei.

Wang Wei gives the speech.

Wang Wei

Good morning everybody, today the general overview of the Games operation. On the 4th day of the Games, there were a total 24 competition events staging in 28 venues including 18 in Beijing and 10 in co-host cities. The competition venues received 2,854 athletes and 2,030 team officials from 705 participating teams as well as 2,108 technical officials, 380,146 spectators, 5,867 VIPs and 8,264 journalists. In addition, the venue received 345 training teams consisting of 2,036 athletes and 643 team officials. Competition organizations and venue operations run smoothly throughout the day.

Of the 24 competitions, 9 competitions had an attendance rate of over 90%, 9 over 80%, 4 over 70% and the remaining 2 over 60%, that is the attendance in the venues. To follow the information of the changes in the tennis schedule, due to the heavy rains, only 11 matches took place on August 10, the first day of the tennis event. Of the remaining 34 matches, 17 matches were held in between the pre-arranged matches of August 11 and 17, and 17 were held on August 12.

Update for August 13, the 5th day of the Olympic Games will see 27 games in 30 venues, a total of 17 gold medals will be awarded today. Weather forecast for today: Beijing and Tianjin will experience light rain in the late afternoon. Shanghai will remain hot and humid.

One clarification, yesterday, I said that I don't know about the 21 point regarding the Chinese media that are prohibited on reporting certain areas of the Olympic Games, I checked that there was none. There is no such 21 point document. Chinese media, according to the Chinese constitution, are free to report on the Games. Thank you.

Sun Weide

Thank you, Mr. Wang. Now I would like to give the floor to Mr. Liu.

Liu Shaowu gives the speech.

Liu Shaowu

Dear friends from the media, good morning. On behalf of the security department of the BOCOG, I would like to pay tribute to all of you. I want to cover three aspects or three issues here.

First, at all venues, especially in Beijing during the Games, everything is smooth about security around the venues. And so far as the general order concerns, there are no major incidents. Everything is going on smoothly.

Secondly, in some of the remote provinces and other countries, there are incidents in two places as well; we have deployed additional security in Beijing and step-up measures according to earlier plans. But these measures don't mean that the security conditions have changed. We have been asked by the media again and again about the additional deployments. These deployments have been put in place as routine practices that were also observed by previous Games. And we are using the same personnel and equipment for this Games as for previous Games. After additional deployments, we have taken notes of the praises that were given by the athletes, coaches and the members of the Olympic family to security personnel.

Sun Weide

Thank you Mr. Liu, now the floor is yours.

Giselle Davies at the press conference.

Giselle Davies

Thank you very much. Good morning everyone. Just two little points from me and then I am going to introduce IOC guest today. President Rogge today will be at Weightlifting and Judo. These are the two sports that he will attend as I mentioned earlier in the week here, in endeavor to visit all 28 Games during the course of the Olympic Games. Just another point we thought might be interesting to you and we have further information up on our website yesterday. It is with regards to the athletes from Togo, Benjamin Boukpeti who won a bronze today in canoeing. He is one of the Olympic solidarity athletes benefit from funding and grant from the IOC's Olympic Solidarity Program. He had his first game since Athens. And following that, we became aware that he needed support in order to manage to go further to further Games. Part of the program we ran across the four year period from 2004 to 2008, where some 245 million U.S. dollars are spent for the athletes and coaches and training environment has benefited the athletes who I delighted to say, yesterday won a bronze medal. As I said there will be more details the stories on our website.

In day 5 of the Games, we thought it is the time to bring Mr. Gilbert Felli. He is the IOC's Olympic Games executive director. From ten Olympic Games, Mr. Felli has done first in his role as sports director and then in the wide role of the executive director of the Games. He was working of course with the chairman with the Olympic coordination commission is responsible for the IOC's over side role guiding organizer during the preparations of the Games. And here during Games-times, helping the 16 days of competition, he has some appraisals from his past experience and how he feels about Beijing 2008. So Gilbert, over to you.

Gilbert Felli gives speech at the press conference.

Gilbert Felli

Thank you, Giselle. Good morning everybody, or good afternoon. First of all, yes, after 4 days of the Games, we thought it would be good to give you some of the point of view on the operation of the Games.

After those 5 days, as the IOC Executive Director of the Olympic Games, we had first of all a fantastic Opening Ceremony, very smooth operation of the Opening Ceremony, one of the most complicated events to organize in the world. Now we have been very pleased with the outcome of it.

Secondly, we are here, as you know, for the athletes. And the athletes are what we care for. I can say they are very happy. The access to Beijing, the Olympic Village, all of them praise this Olympic Village. I've never seen a village like this. The food for them is very important. They gain praises. The transportation to the Village, very happy athletes, the laundry services in the sports venues and the training conditions for all of them. As a matter of fact, the IOC President said he took his breakfast at the Olympic Village this morning in a corner so that he is not to be disturbed by too many people. But he said so many athletes realized he was there and came to him and said president, thank you. I have never seen a condition for us like this. I have never seen a Village like this.

The Second thing for us at the Olympic Games, we have to make sure that the sports are running smoothly. Again, fantastic venues we know and beautiful display. But the most important we are always concerned is that to ensure the organization and part of the Games go smoothly. And the relationship between the national officials and the international official goes very well. And we don't have any issues so far and we are very happy with that. And of course, we have very high athletic performance. They are the highest level. Giselle told us that Togo won their medal, and India won their first gold medal. The work we all do together is paying off today.

President Rogge has watched 8 events and he is very happy on the relationship with the organizing committee.

The service and condition that you have to work here, at the MPC and IBC and the venues, again, we see many feedback from all of you on the quality provided by he Olympic Organizing Committee.

Our sports also, we have been very happy to what we have been able to do. The activity before the Games and now during the Games and I think we have a good feedback from them.

One the most difficult thing we always have during the Games is transportation. Again, it is the most complicated transportation to do as you can understand.

As you can understand there are about 41 world championships and we have to deal with more 10,500 athletes and all the officials. We have to go from one place to another to training facilities and the competition venues. The transportation is working smoothly and we didn't receive any complaints from any of us. We have 1,700 of the buses going around and 3,500 cars going around. About the accommodation issues, all of us are pleased with the accommodations. Again you witness a lot of volunteers. You are in China and a lot of people wanted to work. All the volunteers are dedicated to do things. Sometimes we got difficulty in understanding between the volunteers and the people. But we have to say that they are doing a fantastic job, and the smile of the volunteers is fantastic even the ones who are walking. It is not easy to do. The policemen are smiling and it is something good and they have a good performance for the organizing committee.

We have some fantastic and high level guests. We could read that Bill Gates said it was fantastically managed. Of course, more news will come to you on the coming days about the feedback from broadcasting ratings. The ITMS will be here in a few days to tell you about it. We already know today that we are on the very high side concerning the ratings of the broadcastings. I will conclude by saying the success of the operation and the management of the Games comes on the relationship that we are in between the Organizing Committee, IOC and all the other stakeholders. We would like to thank BOCOG because they always respond to what we are trying to do together and the relationship between the Organizing Committee and the IOC can be priced to a very high level. So this concludes my presentation. I'm ready to answer any questions.

Sun Weide

Please stand up before raising your question for the purpose of the broadcasters.