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China's Success in Osaka to Help Beijing's Olympic Bid
China's continuing success at the East Asian Games will help Beijing's bid to stage the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, a senior Chinese sports official said Saturday.
Liu Guangchun, deputy director general of the press commission of the Chinese Olympic Committee, said China's sizeable gold medal haul at the third edition of the Games reflected the desire of Chinese athletes to bring the Olympics to their capital city.
"The way for our athletes to support the bid is to do their own work here well, so in this regard the better the results they have in the East Asian Games the more it will help support our bid," Liu told AFP.
Beijing is the front runner among the candidates cities -- which also include Paris, Toronto, Osaka and Istanbul -- when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) votes on July 13 in Moscow to decide the winner.
China has dominated the nine-day, 17-sport regional mini-Olympics, almost doubling their nearest rival, Japan, in the gold medal standings.
Given that only 76 members of the 297-strong Chinese squad participated at last year's Olympics in Sydney, Liu said he was pleased by China's overall performance.
"The delegation is quite satisfied with their success especially since we, like a lot of national teams, are going through a period of reconstruction after the Sydney Olympics."
Worryingly for China's regional rivals, Liu warned that many of their athletes on show for the first time in Osaka had the potential to be world beaters.
"For a lot of these young athletes we are not sure about their training levels but from what we have seen we are confident they can go on to better things," he said, pointing in particular to China's youth volleyball team participating in the women's competition.
Liu also defended the existence of the East Asian Games saying they gave emerging athletes a valuable chance to compete on the international stage against world class opponents.
"The purpose for China, like most of the delegations, is sending our young athletes to get meaningful experience in a comprehensive multi-sports event and help them get better results over the next four years," he said.
"I think the standards of competition are increasing with each Games especially with Australia and Kazakhstan competing and so they have been a dynamic force in helping our athletes."
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