China is ready for Olympic : Sun Weidi

"The preparations have been very smooth and we are entering the final stage with most of the 37 sport facilities completed," said Sun Weidi, deputy director of BOCGO.

He told a group of Asean journalists that over 100,000 volunteers have been enlisted to assist with the great game. The first group of 70,000 would help with the Olympic Games from 827 August and the latter group of 30,000 for the Paralympic Games which will be held a few weeks in September. They were selected from more than 1.3 million applicants.

During the games, more than half a million foreign visitors are expected to come to China together with one million Chinese visitors.  

To ensure that lowincoming residents of Beijing and others are able to buy tickets to attend the sport events of their choices, Sun said cheaper price tickets are also allocated for this purpose. He said some tickets cost only 25 to 25 yuans, most of the event ticket costs below 100 yuans or 500 baht.

Of all seven million tickets available for 28 sport competitions in 302 separate events, six million tickets have been sold all over the world. "Only one million ticket left and they would be gone soon," Sun pointed out.

More than 12,000 athletes from 205 countries will compete for 302 golden medals. China has a high hope that with its 570 enlist sport men and women, it would be able to able to bag more than 32 gold medals in the previous Olympic Games in Athen, Greece in 2004.

"We will try our best," he said.

According to BOCGO, there were new two sport events at the Beijing games—the 10-kilometre freestyle swimming and BMX bike race.