IN BRIEF (Page 23)

Tennis

China Open tickets go on sale

Tickets for the Tennis China Open went on sale on June 6 and can be purchased through www.emma.cn.

The tournament, entering its fifth year, will run from Sept 20 to 28 at the Beijing International Tennis Center with ticket sales launching in more than 20 countries around the world.

As the biggest tennis event in Beijing, the China Open will boast newly crowned French Open champion and world No 1 Ana Ivanovic, American big server Andy Roddick and Spanish clay-court specialist David Ferrer.

"We expect that fans will not only enjoy a top-quality tournament, but the highest standard of international ticketing as well," said Jonathan Krane, president of Emma Ticketmaster.

It will join nine other host cities in the revamped 500 Series setting in 2009. The 500 Series events are one tier below the nine Masters Series tournaments.

WTA has named the China Open as its premier event starting next year, making it one of four major combined events in the world, together with the stops at Indian Wells, Miami and Madrid.

Skating

Star ambassadors for gym

China's figure-skating world champions Pang Qing and Tong Jian were announced as the new ambassadors of Hokay Gym, formerly Hosa Sports, on Sunday.

With the pair backing its development, the Hokay Gym, which established its first health club in Beijing in 1999, will put more effort into promoting winter sports such as ice hockey and figure staking.

According to Hokay's president Zhang Yuan, the gym will set up an ice hockey program that will recruit about 30 children to train overseas and hasten China's ice hockey development.

The Hokay Xinglong Ice Center is the company's first major ice rink. Located in XinglongPark, the rink has held many national and international winter sports competitions, such as the Asian Ice Hockey League.

After nearly 10 years of development, Hokay already owns nearly 100 fitness clubs all over China.

It currently has more than one million members and has become the largest professional fitness agency chain in China.

It's main business includes popular sports, competitive sports and physical education.

(China Daily 06/10/2008 page23)