POSTED: November 13th 2010
Appointments
PyeongChang 2018: Bringing the winter Games to Asia will open the market
LAURA WALDEN / Sports Features Communications
TAMPA, Nov. 13: The 29th Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) General Assembly held in Guangzhou, China was a choice occasion for the PyeongChang bid to drive home their objective to boost the winter sports market in Asia.
Guangzhou is currently hosting the 16th Asian Games, hailed as the largest Asian Games in history, and PyeongChang 2018 obviously held the advantage at the home continent meeting. It will be a different situation in several weeks when the bid campaign tour moves to the EOC General Assembly November 26/27 in Belgrade, Serbia.
Bid ceo Yang Ho Cho said: “A Winter Games in PyeongChang will create a new market for winter sports in Asia, home to 60% of the world's population.
“It would be an honour for us to host the Winter Games in 2018, and we would commit to creating Asia’s first long-term and sustainable winter sport legacy, offering the Olympic Movement and winter sports new growth and new potential, a world of ‘New Horizons’.”
Cho was joined by senior members of the bid delegation Yong Sung Park (President of the Korean Olympic Committee, and Theresa Rah (PyeongChang 2018 Communications Director). Ambassador Jin-Sun Kim was also in attendance as bid Ambassador on behalf of the Korean Government and he was joined by Governor Kwang Jae Lee the current governor of the Gangwon Province.
The PyeongChang bid is also promoting their NOC Visitation Programme which would start in 2012 and allow the NOCs to send officials over to streamline their individual needs for the Games.
The Gangwon Province has supported a youth program called the ‘Dream Programme’ targeting assisting the growth of winter sports by inviting children from around the world to PyeongChang to experience winter sport for the first time. So far, 806 children from 42 countries have participated in the ‘Dream Programme’, with 290 of these children coming from 15 countries in Asia.
For their cultural program the bid foresees “The Best of Korea” hospitality program bringing restaurants, shopping malls, cultural attractions, and museums to PyeongChang flanking the Games with entertainment.
The bid cities will be required to hand in their bid books January 11th to the IOC and the evaluation visits will take place starting in February. The final vote will take place July 6 in Durban, South Africa at the IOC session.
Keywords · PyeongChang 2018 · Yang Ho Cho · OCA · Yong Sung Park · Theresa Rah · Jin-Sun Kim · Kwang Jae Lee
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