OLYMPICS/ Spotlight
Wrestlers get smoke and music
By Cui Xiaohuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-24 10:24
Like supermodels, wrestlers competing in the Beijing Games will walk out on a T-shaped runway before stepping into the wrestling stage, according to officials.
Athletes competing in the Junior World Wrestling Championship at the new venue for Olympic wrestling will receive a hero's welcome with music and stage smoke before each competition.
"The only sport that really presents their athletes very poorly has always been wrestling," said Mario Saletnig, vice-president of the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA). "
"It is about time that our sport presents our athletes with the welcome they deserve as if they were champions," said Saletnig.
As the first completed Olympic venue built inside a university, the mountain-shaped China Agricultural University Gymnasium for wrestling events was presented last week to FILA.
The stadium is specially designed to let in more sunshine and wind, so the school can run it at low cost after the Games.
"It's a good opportunity for FILA to contribute to the legacy after the Olympic Games," FILA president, Raphael Martinetti, told China Daily.
Elsewhere, the triathlon venue built at the Ming Tomb Reservoir is an iconic project built during Mao Zedong's era. It will also conduct a test run during the Triathlon World Cup next month. Workers laid down rubber tracks Tuesday morning that should help keep the ground a bit cooler under the summer's heat. Designers say they have prepared back-up routes in case of floods.
Three venues that will host modern pentathlon, handball and water polo are scheduled to be finished soon.
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