Wed, Aug 18, 2004 page4

• Kaohsiung looks to Athens games for sports lessons

  To study Athens' experience in hosting the Olympic Games and use it as a reference in preparing to hold the 2009 World Games, Kaohsiung City Government sent a six-man team to the city for a 10-day visit, led by Deputy Mayor Lin Yung-chien. Lin spoke to Taipei Times special reporter in Athens Lin Chieh-yu about what the team has learned from their trip

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  Taipei Times: What is the most important thing you have learned after being here for almost a week?

  Lin Yung-chien (林永堅): The Athens Olympics was seven years in the making. For the first three years, because of political in-fighting, planning work was stalled. As a result, while after seven years, there's been a successful opening ceremony, there are numerous problems. Our strongest feeling is that, with five years left to prepare for the 2009 World Games, we may not have enough time; that we may have to revise the original plan and start earlier and work faster.

  

  Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh, center, and other guests attend the ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of a stadium for the 2009 World Games, which will bring the southern city onto the international stage.

  FILE PHOTO: LIBERTY TIMES

  TT: The Athens opening ceremony won praise because the performances highlighted the uniqueness of Greek civilization. How will the Kaohsiung World Games draw out Taiwan's -- and Kaohsiung's -- uniqueness?

  Lin: Of course, we will need to conceive a way to do this. We will not say that only Taiwanese performers can take part, as this would be far too limiting. Basically, we would hope to display such things as the diversity of our indigenous culture, the convenience and networked nature of our technology, and the excellence of our environmental protection.

  Previous World Games have focused on publicizing the host city, but Kaohsiung fought to host the 2009 games for the more important aim of promoting Taiwan, and especially to enable the international media to experience the distance between Taiwan and China. We don't want to continue to allow foreigners to think that China and Taiwan are one and the same.

  TT: You have touched on matters of efficiency. Many international journalists attending the Athens Games have complained that transport and communications are too complex and inefficient, costing them a lot of reporting time. Also, the organizers have recruited a lot of volunteers, but many are muddled and confused. Would Kaohsiung have to overcome problems of this sort?

  Lin: Indeed. I have felt from the outset that the problem with the Athens Olympics is that the volunteer groups have had insufficient training and that cultural tourism has not succeeded in coordinating with the sports event. There is no efficient system for distributing information and services for the press are inadequate. They should, for example, have published a handbook containing all the basic information about the games and given it to each volunteer, and provided full training before the games opened. Many volunteers come from outside Athens. They're not familiar with the area.

  Also, the Greek government has not taken sound measures to promote tourist sites and cultural activities. Even the times of the Greek Symphony Orchestra's performances have been arbitrarily changed. We need to think hard about how to introduce the special tourist features and venues of Kaohsiung and Taiwan to the athletes coming for the World Games, the press, the friends and relatives of the athletes, as well as sports fans from around the world.

  We have also seen that Athens doesn't have good Internet services for providing Olympic Games information, so a lot of material has had to be photocopied, with the result that there is too much printed material. This could all have been saved so that all that paper wouldn't have been wasted.

  As far as the media are concerned, the Athens Organization Committee placed two large buildings next to the main stadium to serve as media centers, one for the electronic media, the other for the press. The World Games is one-third the size of the Olympics, so Kaohsiung will plan for one large media center. But Kaohsiung will hope to improve provisions for the daily needs of media personnel. For example, for journalists who go abroad for two weeks the games ought to provide laundry services, quicker and more convenient telecommunications and a greater variety of food and drink. Taiwan has lots of snacks and tidbits, and we will provide these for the athletes and media.

  TT. The Athens Olympics show that the question of efficiency also comes down to the attitude of the entire population of the city. The people of Athens are much less enthusiastic about the games than the service personnel at the games. Kaohsiung is bound to have to accelerate its internalization process, such as the extent of English language proficiency and residents' knowledge of the World Games and so on. Could these "software" problems perhaps be the crux of the Kaohsiung Games' success?

  Lin: That's right. Yesterday we met Ron Froehlich, president of the International World Games Association. He warmly affirmed our enthusiastic study [of the games]. We also discussed problems concerning Athens' shortage of resources and inadequate coordination, and the less-than-helpful, less-than-friendly attitude of the Greek people and each facility toward foreigners. So I know Kaohsiung must produce road signs in English for all its roads. Mass transportation system personnel and taxi drivers will have to study. Ordinary shops will have to have price lists in different currencies and products will have to have US-dollar price tags.

  Southern Taiwan is a very warm and friendly place. The people are very hospitable; they are very straightforward and don't pull tricks on people. We believe that, basically, the people of Kaohsiung will welcome the athletes, VIPS and tourists from all countries. The important thing is whether we can enable these foreign friends to feel at home, and the crux of that will be to ensure that when they go out and about they don't find it difficult to communicate.

  TT: You say that you want to expedite Kaohsiung's preparations for the World Games, but where are the funds and the people going to come from?

  Lin: We estimate that the main World Games park [stadium area] will require NT$10 billion. The portion to fund the main stadium itself must be budgeted by the central government next year. Kaohsiung City Government has already budgeted NT$40 million as the organization committee's first injection of cash next year, but if the central government can't produce the necessary balance of funds next year, we will, of course, be unable to start work early. Once the construction of facilities gets underway, later on, I believe the city government will be able to raise funds from the private sector and that liaising with cooperating companies will be easy.

  We originally planned to form the organization committee task force in October, but it now looks as though we'll have to do it earlier, in September, so that it can negotiate with the central government over the budget.

  We also want to send a delegation to take part in the preparation work for next year's World Games in Germany. Of course, all this will cost a lot of money, so as we've been attending the Athens Olympics over the last few days, we've been getting more and more nervous. We hope we can find money soon and get on with the work earlier than planned.

  The Athens Olympics took seven years and yet the construction of some stadiums and urban renewal plans were not realized. We have less than five years left, and Taiwan has no experience holding a large-scale, international sports event. Those who have come to Athens with me on this occasion, Kaohsiung City Government Finance Bureau Chief Ray Dawn (董瑞斌), city government consultant Anthony Lin (林中進) and Dean of Student Affairs at National Sun Yat-sen University Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀), all believe that the city government and the central government will have to change their concept of the pace of planning for the event. We must start this September, otherwise five years will pass in the blink of an eye, things will become frenetic, the games will fail and, rather than bringing Taiwan some glory, we will damage the country's image; it will be a nightmare.
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