Location: Olympic Green
Competitions: Artistic Gymnastics, Trampolines, and Handball;
Total land surface: 80,900 sq m
Post-Games use: This is one of the best sports facilities in Beijing, and can be used for international sports competition, cultural and entertaining functions, and also will serve as a multi-functional work out center for local residents.
Venue: Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park
Use during Olympic Games: Rowing, Canoe/Kayak (Flat-water and Slalom), Marathon Swimming
Location: Mapo Village, Shunyi District, Beijing
Floor area (sq m): 31,850
Use during Paralympic Games: Rowing
Temporary seats: 25,800 (10,000 for standing seats)
Permanent seats: 1,200
Planned completion date: July 28, 2007
The building of the National Aquatics Center, or rather known as the "Water Cube," topped off today. The "Water Cube" structure was built in agreement with a water-saving plan concept to be a gigantic green architectural spectacle.
The venue's membrane formation, covered by special ETFE (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene) air cushions, isn’t new in China and is also the world's largest and most complicated ETFE project, but it is also an inexpensive and water-saving concept.
The blue-colored "hubble-bubble" textile is much lighter than conservative glazing structures with the similar lighting effect. So the cost of its sustaining steel structure was reduced significantly, said Zheng Fang, the pinnacle designer of the Chinese-side design company.
Take a look at this gigantic technological wonder:
The lighting facilities were put into action inside the National Stadium, also known as the "Bird's Nest," on February 4, 2008.
The red lighting structures and greyish steel structures of the development make up a grand addition to the capital city's nightscape.
With the last two thousand lamps scheduled to be calibrated on February 5, citizens can enjoy the brilliant night view on the eve of and on Spring Festival holiday.
Midnight revelers will have a more choice of public transportion during the 2008 Olympic Games as Beijing planned to launch special bus routes and also to increase another seven routes to the twenty four hour bus network.
Thirty-four bus destinations would be arranged to ease possible transport pressure around games locations and tourist sites during the Olympic Games, as reported on Thursday by Liu Xiaoming, deputy director of the BMTC or rather Beijing Municipal Transportation Commission.
Beijing would increase seven additional night bus course besides the current twelve, Liu said.
Liu said a superior urban transport network would perk up the city's environment.
"If 1% of private car owners in China use public transport, we calculated that up to 80 million liters of petrol would be saved every day," he added.
March 4, 2008: In conformity with the standards of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), international regulations and Beijing's proposal pledges, BOCOG will grant standardized, diversified and personalized transport system for an estimated fifty thousand people participating the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games, as reported by a BOCOG official on Tuesday.
Clients comprise members of the Olympic Family, athletes, team and technological officials, and accredited medium, Yu Chunquan, head of the Transport Department of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games of the twenty ninth Olympiad (BOCOG) in this week's "Getting to Know" meeting.
He said development has been made in the following segments of Olympic and Paralympic transport needs:
1. The vehicles for various client groups was made available; while transport service personnel confirmed this;
2. Momentary transport grounds have been chosen and their planning and design phase was completed;
3. Service standards for different recognized client groups have been formulated;
4. Transport strategies for the Olympic and Paralympic location have been organized;
5. Traffic signs for special Olympic lanes and city roads have been considered;
6. and the Olympic transport service mechanical systems have been developed and have approved initial tests.
Think of this mega city as a huge Olympics village with adequate transportation system.
A Sprinter's Strategy – Don’t hold back, give everything that you got
Sprinters run a short distance, a burst of speed that by no means lets up is the winning strategy that gives the gold medal to the winner. From the point that they hear the starting gun, sprinters put everything that they have in their body in terms of full-speed, nothing-held-back run for the finishing line.
You need to train your mind and most importantly, whenever you have some free time try visualize when you are in the tracks. That’s the moment the body would get ready itself to give a 100% to the finishing line. You don’t need to be on the track to practice all the time, you just need to visualize it.
A Marathoner's Strategy - Pace Yourself Correctly
Unlike sprinters, marathoners need to conserver their energy towards the finishing line. They can’t spend all their energy during the race as usually they will go on running for hours.
They need to know their body limits – when to use their energy and when to reserve some. But most importantly they need to have their right energy when reaching the finishing line.
It’s always the checkered flag that counts.
The mind always wins. Think of the scenario below:
A world class athlete which has the following traits:
1. Low self esteem
2. Always think of loosing
3. No fighting power
4. Lazy to go for training
5. A negative person as a whole
This athlete has been put up to compete with another athlete which has the following traits:
1. High self esteem and confident of what he wants to achieve
2. High fighting spirit
3. Loves challenges and gets the satisfaction out of it
4. Vigorously train for the event
5. Positive mindset
Who do you think will win? I place my bets in athlete number 2. It’s just the figure of mindset changes which would grant you successive win in the Olympics. I believe that you can use secrets from the movie ‘The Secret’ and apply it into your games.
If you have not watched the movie yet, here’s a short video clip of ‘The Secret’:
Step 1: Goal Setting
This is one of the most important steps in becoming a successful Olympian. For example,
1. What difference would you like to create in your life that excites you just by thoughts?
2. What do you enjoy doing?
3. Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
4. What exactly is your dream?
However, just thinking and planning your goals is not enough. You need to take action to make it work. Never procrastinate and always put your plans into action.
This is a story about Tiger Woods: When he was a young boy, he jot down on a 3×5 card that he wants to break all of Jack Nicklaus’ records. Tiger always read his card every night. Look at Tiger Woods now.
Step 2: See how your goal materialize by imagining it.
It’s important that you boost yourself everyday by imagining what it would be like when you succeed. Just visualize your goals and what you would be doing after achieving it. This would definitely keep you on track with progress and guess what – usually thoughts become things or rather it materializes.
Step 3: Quality Goals.
Do you have an idol like Tiger Woods, Michael Schumacher, Michael Jordan, Maria Sharapova and the likes of these sports superstars? Visualize that one day you will play like them. Think of a goal and stick to it.
In my scenario it was Perseverance. I knew it was going to be tough to have to endure many crashes and injuries and merely refuse to give up. On the other hand, I made a decision to become perseverant. Never Quit – Thomas Edison did not create the light bulb in a single try, he tried 1000 times before succeeding. Imagine what if he gave up?
Step 4: Attitude to Succeed
It’s usually your attitude towards what you want to achieve that will make things work. Try taking initiative in changing your
1. Habits
2. Thoughts
3. Success mindset
You’ll be on your way to success.
Beijing has a graver problem. It is one of the most toxic and polluted mega-cities in the world.
This calls for a dissimilar approach – use more natural gas supply to ramp up time before the Beijing 2008 Olympics, which would be held in August 2008.
According to sources they have recommended to use coal bed methane gas to light the Olympic flame. Further investigation pointed to a widespread replacement of coal for natural gas in Beijing in the period of one year. Now it appears official. Earlier, China Petroleum Daily said that state-owned China National Petroleum Corp is willing to increase Beijing’s contribution of natural gas by 5.5 billion cubic meters.
Natural gas will be consumed instead of coal for Beijing’s electric power plants. Even some cabs and buses will be using natural gas and coal bed methane gas. However, this move won’t be a first for China as their transportation system are gradually revolutionizing over the period of time.