152 delegations to 'start here' in Shenzhen
Updated: 2011-08-12 14:09
(chinadaily.com.cn)
More than 8,000 athletes from 152 delegations will compete in 306 events from 24 sports at the 26th Summer Universiade set to open on Friday in Shenzhen, a young and energetic city in South China.
"With just one day to go, I can say Shenzhen Universiade would be the biggest in history," said Huang Guoqiang, a spokesman of the Shenzhen Universiade.
According to the organizers, Shenzhen had got ready for the biggest-ever sporting event held in the city. The opening ceremony is ready, and the supporting measures including catering, traffic and medical services aree all on their marks.
"Start here -- Make a difference" is the core concept of the Universiade. As introduced by Shi Gang, deputy director of the ceremony, the ceremony would be adhere to the concept.
"The length of the ceremony will be controlled within 120 minutes," said Shi," and there are cultural activities before and after the ceremony."
It would rain a little bit during the opening ceremony, but the rain wasn't going to be heavy enough to disturb the schedule of the ceremony.
In term of catering, organizers vowed to avoid any food accident during the event.
"The organizing committee has set a goal of 'zero accident', 'zero outage' and 'zero complaint' for the Universiade food service," said Wang Mei, a spokes woman from the organizing committee. "At the same time, we are to avoid any poison, drug or deterioration on food."
About 400,000 cars will not be on road during the Universiade in order to relieve the traffic pressure, while medicines and medical equipment worthy of about 10,000,000 yuan ($1.6 million) had been prepared for the medical demands.
According to the latest data from the organizing committee, a total of 3,156 journalists from 331 media organizations around the world had registered to cover the Games.