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Beijing Maps Out Locations for Olympic Venues
Suburban tourist resorts and universities will be among the Olympic venues should Beijing be chosen to host the 2008 summer Olympic Games, said an official from the city's Olympic bid committee Tuesday, November 28.
Three stadiums and gymnasiums are scheduled to be built in the Changping District in the northern suburbs of Beijing, an area that includes some hot tourism spots, including the Great Wall. Another four such venues will be located in Haidian District, which is where China's most prestigious universities are located, said Jiang Xiaoyu, head of the committee's Publicity Division.
Jiang said the above areas were two of the four in which Olympic venues will be focused. The most important venue will be the Olympic park at the north end of Zhongzhou Road, which forms an axis running through the ancient city of Beijing. Other venues will be built along the western stretch of the Second Ring Road.
"The committee wants to keep all of the venues close together, but not crowded. We chose the above four areas on the basis of this," Jiang said.
It has been predicted that the 2008 Games will include 28 sports, which will need 37 stadiums and gymnasiums for competitions and another 58 for training.
Beijing will have 32 of the 37 competition venues. Soccer games will be held in Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang and Qinhuangdao, and sailing in Qingdao.
A number of major sports sites in the city are being renovated, including the Capital Gymnasium, the Workers' Stadium and Gymnasium and the National Sports Centre, and new ones are in the planning stages.
Beijing is one of five candidate cities for the 2008 Olympics, its rivals being Paris, Osaka, Istanbul and Toronto. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) demands that all the Olympic competitions venues in each city should reach standards set by the relevant international sports organizations.
So far, the sailing venue in Qingdao has reached these standards and been approved.
The IOC will tour candidate cities from next February and hold the final voting in July in Moscow.
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