Shenzhen well prepared for Universiade

Updated: 2011-07-25 17:06

(chinadaily.com.cn)

Over 7,500 athletes and 3,500 accompanying officials from 147 countries and regions had registered for the 26th Summer Universiade as of July 21, and planning for the sporting event was in its final stages, according to a plenary meeting held by the Universiade Organizing Committee on Sunday, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported on Monday.

The Universiade, which will be held between August 12 and 23 in Shenzhen,  will include 306 events across 24 sports, the most events in the competition's history.

Construction of all of the 60 Universiade venues was fully complete and they will all be opened on August 5 for the athletes' training.

Rehearsals for the opening and closing ceremonies are underway, and since tickets for the opening ceremony are not available to the general public, the event will be broadcast live on CCTV, according to the Organizing Committee.

Close to 3,000 journalists from 297 media organizations have registered to report on the tournament and around 2,000 additional media support stuff are also expected to attend.

In addition, the Organizing Committee said 2,466 technical officials have been appointed and among them are 402 international technical officers, 1,536 national technical officers, 322 accompanying umpires, 19 anti-doping technology officers and 19 other officers.

To meet the promise of holding a low-carbon Universiade, the organizers created an online virtual torch relay, making short of the torch relay routine in reality, but largely expanding the scale through the Internet, attracting 6.2 million people to attend and greatly saving on operation costs.

And according to the organizer, there will be 26,000 games volunteers and 250,000 city volunteers involved in the event.

About Shenzhen

Shenzhen is located at the southern tip of the Chinese mainland on the eastern bank of the mouth of the Pearl River and neighbors Hong Kong.

The brainchild of Deng Xiaoping, the country's first special economic zone was established here by the Chinese Government in 1980. It has been a touchstone for China's reform and opening-up policy since then.