Beijing on track 100 days for Games 奥运倒计时100天

With 100 days to countdown from April 30th before the curtain rises on the 2008 Olympic Games, the organizers are busy fine-tuning for perfect staging of the world’s sporting spectacle.  And ChineseHour is happy to teach you the new words today:
倒计时 dǎo jì shí
countdown

倒 dǎo, inverse, upside down
计 jì, calculate
时 shí, time

If you wish to visit Beijing for the summer Olympic games or just stay home to watch the games on TV, it is high time to learn to speak basci Mandarin Chinese from today. ChineseHour is your first place to learn Chinese with one-on-one instant tutoring, diverse courses, and native Chinese teachers. FREE trial to the Study Advisor (www.chinesehour.com ) now!

Construction of venues, easing the city’s traffic congestion and efforts to clean up the air are all on target for the Aug. 8-24 event, and International Olympic Committee officials have repeatedly voiced confidence that the athletes were going to experience a top class Games here this summer.

 ”There is every reason to believe that we will see here a gold-medal performance in August, also superb organization of the Olympic Games,” Hein Verbruggen, chairman of the IOC’s coordination commission for the Beijing Games, told reporters this month after his last inspection visit to the Chinese capital.

IOC president Jacques Rogge also predicted the Beijing Games to be a “great success”.

“Here and there are small details to be fine-tuned but I am saying that the level of preparedness … is really excellent and … I am optimistic that the Games will be a great success,” said Rogge.

The smooth construction of Olympic venues is a major source of confidence.

Since being awarded the 2008 Games seven years ago, Beijing has engaged in an aggressive effort to clean up its toxic haze. The city has spent nearly more than 15 billion U.S. dollars on anti-pollution measures such as moving factories, adding subway lines, upgrading boilers and converting coal-heated homes to electric.

The authorities plan to close factories and force 19 heavy polluters to reduce emissions by 30 percent for the two months around the Olympics and Paralympics, and measures to limit factory emission are also in place for areas surrounding the capital, including the city of Tianjin, the provinces of Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong, and the Inner Mongolia region.

 based on a study released last month by IOC’s medical commission, Rogge said that the health of the athletes is “absolutely not in any danger” during Games time.

Officials are also confident about bringing traffic congestion under control with a ban on some cars during the Olympics and a plan to set up special lanes on key roads that link competition sites with the athletes’ village, the media village and training venues.

 Highlighting the public’s enthusiasm for the greatest show on Earth, more than one million people were in the hunt for an Olympics volunteer’s post and training programs are well under way.

Third phase of the domestic ticket sales will start on May 5, with large crowds expected to chase the remaining 1.38 million tickets for 16 sports including volleyball, athletics, boxing and football. Of the 6.8 million Olympic tickets available for sale, about 75percent are reserved for the domestic public, with the rest going overseas.