Turin ready to unveil Olympics
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-09 05:43

Italian Sports Minister and senior IOC member Mario Pescante confirmed that there would be no police raids on the Athletes Village.

There had been fears of police raiding the village and taking athletes away in handcuffs, but Pescante dismissed such fears.

"Police will not enter the village. This is not going to happen," said Pescante.

But he warned that any athlete caught taking drugs would face the Italian legal system and risked being jailed.

"If an athlete tests positive, the Italian court will intervene. There is no exception. Everybody, no matter from which country, will be submitted to the Italian law," he said.

The Italian government easily survived a confidence vote in the lower house of parliament on Tuesday on a series of measures bolstering security for the Games.

The chamber of deputies voted by 307 votes to 207 in favour of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government, to back legislation boosting by more than 1,000 the number of police deployed for the Games.

A massive security operation will be in place with some 15,000 police and military personnel deployed and the use of AWACS surveillance planes.

Meanwhile, ticket sales have also picked up with more than 700,000 - 85 per cent of the total - already sold and with organizers planning to offer low-price tickets to school children for less popular events.

But ski legend Jean-Claude Killy believes that organizers could have trouble meeting their target of having more than 50 per cent of the seats occupied even for blue riband events such as alpine skiing.

"There's a real problem for alpine skiing," Killy said, adding that it was "becoming more and more tricky" to gain media coverage, partly because attention largely focused on personalities in the sport.

"The Italian example shows that interest is directly linked to the skiers, whereas before, the sport could carry itself," he added.