A strong delegation from Qatar is heading to Bangkok for the Asia Sports Summit and Expo to promote the largest multi-sport event in history – the 15th Asian Games being staged in Doha in 2006.
The visit comes following of a series of road shows to major Far East and Asian capitals during which the Qataris unveiled details of a US$2.8 billion investment in the 40-sport, 400-event, two-week competition.
The Asia Sports Summit and Expo, to be held from September 23 to 25, will address “Propelling Asian Sports Towards Professionalism in the 21st Century”.
Delegates to Asia Sports Summit and Expo will gain insight to a series of ambitious projects that will ready Doha for the influx of up to 200,000 athletes, officials and spectators. The three-day event will be a gathering of sports authorities, ministries, OCA member-nations, sports commissions, sports facilities designers, architects, sports event organizers, media executives, athletes and anyone that is involved in sports.
The Qatari government is preparing the sports venues, the most notable of which is the futuristic Khalifa Sports City, which includes a 50,000-seat stadium, an Olympic standard aquatic center, sports hospital, energy center and a landmark indoor hall containing seven sports arenas under a vast, clear-span dome.
The new Asian Games Village in Doha will house 11,000 athletes for the Games, after which it will become a medical center. New hotels and expansions of existing hotels will add 14,000 rooms to Doha’s existing hotel accommodation.
The 15th Asian Games will be held in the Middle East for the first time, it is the first to encompass so many sports, the first to feature over 400 events, the first to involve up to 11,000 athletes representing, for the first time, 45 countries.
The 2006 event will be the first to provide over 3,000 hours’ of HD television coverage, beamed to 47 countries and reaching an audience of at least 1.5 billion. (menareport.com)
© 2004 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
