Foreign athletes train in Japan for the Beijing Olympics
About 1,000 athletes, coaches, trainers and officials from at least 25 nations have chosen Japan instead of China as a training location prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics:
“I hear that the number is still growing even in places we don’t know,” said Kenji Nishimura, deputy chief of international affairs at the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC).
He attributed the convenience and geographical proximity of facilities in Japan for the popularity. For similar reasons, hundreds of foreign Olympians also also training in neighbouring South Korea at the same time.
[...]
But for five French track-and-field athletes, including 400-metre sprinter Leslie Djhone, Wakayama was not the original venue for their last pre-Olympic training camp August 8-13.
Anti-French activities in China following France’s protests against a Chinese crackdown on unrest in Tibet in March forced the French athletic federation to switch the venue from the bustling Chinese city of Shanghai.
“The political tension has led the French athletics federation to assume it would be better to shun China for the training camp,” said Kimihiko Tsujioka, a sports promotion official at the Wakayama municipal office.
“They were worried about air pollution and the safety of food in China,” added an official in Kaminoyama where two athletes from oil-rich Bahrain — Ethiopian-born world women’s 1,500m champion Maryam Yusuf Jamal and Kenyan-born men’s 800-metre runner Yusuf Saad Kamel — will train from August 6-17.
Beijing is trying to cut down on its air pollution ahead of the games. Apparently traffic has been halved in the city after new rules limit the roads to odd numbered license plates one day, and even the next. However, it is being reported that the skies are “still hazy” in Beijing.
