Reports on Olympic Opening torch ceremony "not trustworthy"

Source: Xinhua | 07-23-2008 16:51

Special Report:   Olympic Opening Ceremony
Special Report:   2008 Beijing Olympic Games

A senior Chinese sports official termed media reports that five athletes will light up the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony as "not trustworthy".

"Information about personnel lighting the main Olympic torch is highly confidential and confined to only a few," Feng Jianzhong, deputy head of the General Administration of Sport, was quoted in Wednesday's edition of the Beijing News as saying.

Media reports have featured much speculation about the opening ceremony on Aug. 8, and many websites have reported that the main torch will be lit by five athletes at the event.

Feng said that he had no knowledge of the torch arrangement.

However, he said: "The selected personnel should be able to represent the image of China, communicate with the world and display the Olympic spirit."

According to the report, when asked to predict how many gold medals China might clinch, Zhang Haifeng, another sports administration official, said the charm of competitive sport lay in its unpredictability. It was hard to predict the number of gold medals, but the Chinese team's goal was to achieve more than it did in the 2004 Athens Olympics, when it won 32 gold medals.

However, he admitted, that might be hard to achieve, since the Chinese team faced very tough competitors. The name list of the Chinese team would be announced on Friday, he said.

 

Editor:Xiong Qu