Beijing Is Confirming 2008 Olympic Host

The host country of the 2008 Olympic is likely to be Beijing, China.

Before the vote scheduled at 11 p.m. (Korean time) in the World Trade Center, Moscow, Russia, where the 112th general conference of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is held to decide the host country of the 2008 summer Olympic, `strong Beijing theory` is prevailing.

Most IOC authorities agreed that Beijing is likely to gain more votes at the first bid and, even when failed to win half of the votes at the first bid, Beijing will eventually defeat the other candidates.

Particularly, the `strong Beijing theory` is based on the rumor that the retiring Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Chairperson of IOC for 21 years, is strongly backing up Beijing and that the sympathy of China, which had lost its competition by only 2 votes when Sydney was decided as the host of the 2000 Olympic Games, will positively affect the final decision. The competing cities brought out the human rights issue of China but could not change the general trend. However, the strong competitors of Paris and Toronto assured their best effort to the end, stating ``no one knows the final result. We will do our best.``

The decision of the Olympic host city is made by receiving half of the votes at the first bid and, when no other city had collected at least the half of the votes, the votes will continue after dropping the least voted city until a city gains at least the half of the votes.

Zang Hwan-Soo zangpabo@donga.com