The co-host cities of the Beijing Olympics held a press conference 3 PM April 16 in Beijing to brief the media their preparations for the Games. Spokespersons for the BOCOG Soccer Project Team, the Sailing Committee (Qingdao), the Equestrian Committee (Hongkong) and other competition districts answered questions from world's media. China.org.cn presented a live coverage of the press conference.
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"Qingdao model"
Wang Haitao, the assistant chairman from Qingdao for sailing event first introduced preparations about the sailing event. He said the Olympic sailing competition will be held from August 9 to 23, with 11 events of 9 classes (11 gold medals). Nearly 1,000 athletes, coaches and judges from over 60 countries will participate in the competition. Paralympic sailing competition will be held from September 8 to 13, with 3 events (Single-person keelboat, two-person keelboat and three-person keelboat) and 3 gold medals will be awarded. There will also be the opening and closing ceremony for these two events.
Wang Haitao, the assistant chairman from Qingdao for sailing event
According to Wang, the Sailing Athletes Village will start to receive athletes for the events in time. "We are going to introduce a Qingdao model for the first time. We built a spectator dam on land for spectators to watch the sailing event and also the medal stadium is very close to the dam where the spectators will be seated. This is called by the International Sailing Association as the Qingdao model. We achieved quite a few international standards, highly acclaimed by IASAF," said Wang.
Traditionally, there are only long distance sight-seeing vessels which are four hours. Now Qingdao has short distance vessels ready, 1.5 hours, for a price of only 15 yuan. The long-distance fee is 160 yuan. The spectators seated on the dam will pay only 20 yuan. "If you suffer from seasickness you can just sit on the dam to watch the event," said Wang.
Concerning the torch relay, Wang said that they have designed the torch relay route with escorts and bearers finalized, totaling 138. The event will last six hours on July 24.