The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games September 6-17, 2008
The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games September 6-17, 2008
Related story: Third day of Paralympics to award 61 gold medals
Date/Time: 11:00 a.m., Tuesday, September 9
Venue: Main Press Conference (MPC)
Sun Weide
Good morning everyone. Welcome to the IPC/BOCOG press briefing. This morning, we are joined by Mr. Wang Wei, the executive vice president and secretary general of BOCOG; Steffi Klein, IPC Media and Communications Senior Manager; Zhang Qiuping, director of the BOCOG Paralympic Games Department of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad; and Peter Van de Vliet, IPC Medical and Scientific director.
First of all let me give the floor to Mr. Wang Wei.
Wang Wei
On the second day of the Paralympic Games, there were a total of 14 competition events in 15 venues, including 13 in Beijing, and 2 in two co-host cities. The competition venues received 1,819 athletes and 882 team officials from 446 participating teams, as well as 939 technology officials 1,631 journalists, 169,029 spectators and 3,003 VIPs. The training venues received 714 athletes, 180 team officials and 9 journalists.
Attendance
Of the 20 competition sessions held in 13 venues in Beijing, the attendance rate for 14 sessions were over 90%, 2 sessions 80-90%, and 4 sessions 70-80%. Of the three competition sessions held in two co-host cities, one had attendance rate of over 90% and two had 50%.
The Olympic common domain received 280,294 visitors. 1,149,000 tickets have been sold to the public. And 620,000 tickets have been allocated to the education program.
Update for today
The third day of the Paralympics will see 17 competition events. A total of 61 gold medals will be awarded.
Weather
Beijing will experience rain during the day, which may affect outdoor events.
Hong Kong is expected to be clear, becoming overcastted later during the day.
Qingdao is forecasted to be cloudy during the day with winds reaching speed of 4 meters per second.
Thank you.
Steffi Klein
Thank you. Welcome everybody. From our side, we wanted to add the first anti-doping violation of a Pakistani powerlifter. We have Peter next to me and he will answer the specific questions. We did another press release already and it is in the INFO systems, you will get all the facts of the incident from the press release. In regards to the incident yesterday at the athletic venues, we have the chairperson of the IPC Athletics here, Chris Cohen and if you have any specific question about that incident, you can raise them now. Thank you.
Sun Weide
I think now the floor is open for questions.
Japanese newspaper
Could you elaborate the situation why and how IPC would target powerlifters and also whether or not you will have any blood and HTH tests during the competitions. Now as to yesterday's race, if I may, because the Japanese, the defending champion was involved, could you tell us why what is the reason of the re-race because I understand that sometimes you don't decide to re-race regardless of the appeals and protests.
Peter Van de Vliet
With regards to the testing plan that has been set up for the Paralympic Games. It is an exercise that has been made by the IPC Anti-Doping Committee as the sole authority of the anti-doping program during the Games. The distribution of tests over the different sports is done on basis of historical rackets and risks analysis. On the basis of this data and the experience of the previous Games over the past couple of years, I can, without any doubt, say that we have challenges in the sport of powerlifting all these years and that means that there is a significantly higher number of athletes in the sport of powerlifting that are subject to our doping control testing plan, both in competition out of competition. With regards to the analysis done on the samples, I confirm that we conduct both urine and blood samples depending on in and out competition period. The blood samples analysis include human growth hormone, HPOX and blood transfusion. This procedure was in place in the Torino Paralympics Winter Games. This is the first time that blood sampling is on our testing plan during the summer Games.
Chris Cohen
If I can answer the question about how the race will be re-run. It is very unusual for any race in athletics to restage the Games but the jury of appeal looked to the video pictures. They took account of the seriousness of the crash and there are very large of athletes who were in the disadvantage and not able to finish the race. There were 6 athletes who were taken out of the race because of the crash. The decision and the opinion of the jury of appeal were because of that serious position when so many athletes were not able to reach the finish line. In the interest of the fairness to all concern, we decided that the race should be held again.
Vancouver Sun
Can you explain to me why you made the decision to then go forward with the medal ceremony and have the National Anthem of Canada played and asked the athletes to then return the medals?
Chris Cohen
The medal ceremony was outside of the control of the jury of appeal. The problem was there was a lack of communication between the technical information center where the protest was received and the medal ceremony department. I can understand and sympathize entirely with the staffs and the TIC. Only those people who have been in that situation will know that it was absolutely bad loomed that an incident like this happened. There would have been 15 or 20 coaches who were shouting or wanting something to happen. Most of them wanted different to happen. The staff in the TIC will have been overwhelmed by the situation and clearly made a mistake in the process that they carried out. They didn't do them in right order. Therefore, the medal ceremony was held obviously completely incorrectly. The decision of the jury of appeal still has to be carried through because the protest was made absolutely correctly.
Vancouver Sun
A follow up to that is if you could perhaps make comment on the impact that has on the athletes who have to go to the medal ceremony and the kind the emotional impact that they will have to deal with that.
Chris Cohen
I can't speak personally for that feeling because I was never put in that position. But I can understand that it must have been devastating for them to sit there to have their own national anthem played and obviously for the two athletes to have their flags raised and have television coverage in their own country shown them winning the medals then find out that was not the case. It must be devastating for them. I spoke personally to two of the athletes, Dionne and Shelly immediately afterwards to explain the situation, to them to find out that is not the case. I spoke to them afterwards to explain the situation to them.
I think Dionne was very understanding obviously very upset and disappointed but understood that this things happened that mistakes has been made and will be made again in terms of miscommunication. But also serious decisions for those sorts are made. Shelly is less experienced and did not take in quite well the fact this is the case and I understand how upset she would be in that situation. There is nothing we can say on in terms of the impact it had upon them. But from my point of view, we have to make sure that the process is followed thru correctly as much as possible and as I said, I deliberately went to the athletes to explain the situation, if you would like to take the backlash from them because I know how upset they will be because I felt they deserve that opportunity.
BBC
Chris, I have two questions. What is the official time the appeals have to be lodged by?
Chris Cohen
Number one, an appeal has to be registered at the Technical Information Center within 30 minutes of the result being announced.
BBC
And NO. 2, it's believed that there 3 countries who took part with separate complaints and appeals. Can you please explain what are those 3 countries and who those 3 countries are and what were the 3 separate appeals based?
Chris Cohen
I actually have the documents with me. The first of those was from Australia and their protest was in fact in 163 paragraph 2, which talked about obstruction of athletes. Their athletes were obstructed unfairly by another athlete. They did not name the athletes because they may have not known it in that stage. They said they their athletes were obstructed and they wanted to make a protest about the situation. Second one was by the USA, which protests were about the different portions of the race. It was an incident 200 meters further on in the race were they felt that their athlete was impeded by the Canadian athletes. The third one was a protest about the conduct of the officials crossing the track to try to ensure the safety of the athletes who have been injured so that was at the end of the race, in the last 50 meters of the race. That was the chronological order of the 3 protests and therefore that was the order on which the jury of appeal looked at the protests.
Around the Rings
Question for Peter about keeping the Games fair. How does the IPC make sure at the classification affair that athletes are honest? How will the move to sports centric classification help? Thank you.
Peter Van de Vliet
The classification rules are part of the competition rules. That means they are governed by the International Paralympic Sports Federation. They have the responsibility to first implement the series of rules to conduct the classification and to ensure that the conduct of these rules is done in a fair way. The ultimate goal of IPC as being the major event organizer of this event is that it wants to see the number of assessments to be done at Paralympic Games significantly reduced. That means that the message that is delivered to all the parties involved is that we would like to see this process finalize as much as possible in the preparation in the lead up to the Games. It puts away the burden to the athletes and the uncertainty of not knowing until the final days in what class they have been confirmed to participate. Now, it needs to be acknowledged that we also want to ensure that every athlete who meets the qualification standards has a fair chance to compete.
In many sports, there is embedded in the classification rules an explanation that says that an athlete may need to be seen a second or a third time to have the classification stages confirmed. I fully endorse this principle, because it allows us to have the firm decision taken on the states of the athletes. This is a process that again we want to see happen as much as possible before the Games. But to ensure that we have the final resolutions done, before the affective starting of the Paralympic Games competition, there is a classification evaluation period, which allows us to finalize. It also allows us to do a final assessment to athletes. That due to the nature of their impairment, there is fluctuating functional abilities, at certain regularity, needs to be re-seen by the panel because they may switch between two clouds in the event. Is that an answer to your questions?
AFP
Going back to the drugs issue, I just want to find out what will happen now to the athletes? Would he be expelled of the Games? And secondly, this must be very disappointing, because Phillip Craven spoke only a few days ago about his design for totally clean Games.
Peter Van de Vliet
Thanks for that question. Yes, indeed, the athletes, we already initialized the process the validation of the "A" accreditation of the athletes will be folded. The athletes through the IPC have been already informed that the accreditation needs to be handed in, without too much delay. We want to do this and we've respected, sort of means yesterday night, when we handed over the documentation of the anti-doping rule violation, we allowed them to make the provisions to do this throughout the morning that we expected the process to be finished throughout the day. It is also in protection of the athletes. Because we do not want to expose the athletes in this unfortunate situation towards other athletes that are competing.
And also to your question that are ensuring fair Games, I think the fact that we have set up the testing plan and that we conducted the testing and that unfortunately, we face adverse analytical finding and anti-doping rule violations is a confirmation of the statement by Sir Phillip earlier on and during the Opening Ceremony that we want to make this Games fair and fair process. It is the athletes' strict liability principle that applies to doping and the only thing we can do is to ensure that we have a mechanism in place that is detecting the potential risk factors.
| [1][2][Next] |
