Beijing torch relay should focus on China - IOC inspector

IOC inspector Hein Verbruggen believes Beijing organisers would be wasting a huge opportunity if the main emphasis of the 2008 Olympic torch relay was not on China.

The Beijing organisers are still putting the finishing touches to their plan, which is likely to include a trip to the top of Mount Everest, before it is handed to the IOC for approval.

"They want to go abroad and we certainly will not stop them," Verbruggen told Reuters.

"However, I think it would be a tremendously missed opportunity if the emphasis of their torch relay was not on their own country."

The relay of the "flame of peace" has become a carefully organised spectacle and before the last Summer Games in 2004 it visited 34 cities in 27 countries around the world before arriving in Athens.

"There is this little danger that organising committees, I'm not speaking about Beijing, always want to do a little bit more than the previous organising committee," Verbruggen said.

"Sydney (2000) took the torch to the islands of the South Sea, Athens wanted to visit all the previous Olympic cities, and there is this tendency to try and better that.

"So we have said to all future organising committees, 'guys, it is not necessary to go abroad'."

The Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG)'s original plan was to bring the torch from Athens to China overland along a "New Silk Road" but instability in the Middle East may have forced a rethink.

Organisers have always hoped that Taiwan, which China considers a rebel province, will be included in the relay despite increasing tensions between Beijing and Taipei this year.

BOCOG vice-president Jiang Xiaoyu said recently that the detailed plans for the relay would be made public in early 2007.

The Beijing Olympics will start on August 8, 2008.

o Australia is planning to send a record team of almost 500 athletes to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) announced yesterday. AOC president John Coates said early estimates indicated Australia would have a team numbering 496 athletes for Beijing, eclipsing the previous record of 482 for an "away" Games set in Athens in 2004. Australia was represented by 632 athletes when the 2000 Games were held in Sydney.