The Chinese Sports Delegation to the 15th Asian Summer Games was officially announced today at a press conference held at the Headquarters of China's General Administration of Sport in Beijing.
At the press conference Duan Shijie, Xiao Tian and Cui Dalin, deputy chiefs de mission of the Chinese Sports Delegation, gave background information about the organization and preparations of the delegation. The 928-member delegation, headed by Liu Peng, Director of the General Administration of Sport and President of the Chinese Olympic Committee, consists of 647 athletes, 341 men and 306 women, and 281 officials, coaches, doctors and staff members. Among the athletes from all the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, 167 represented China at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and 176 at the 2002 Pusan Asian Games; 109 competed in both Athens 2004 and Pusan 2002; and 413, or 63.8% of all, will make their debut at an international multi-sport Games. It will be China's ninth appearance at the Asian Games since her debut at Tehran 1974.
Chinese athletes will take part in competitions in 362 events of 37 sports, including 232 Olympic events of 27 Olympic sports, and 130 non-Olympic events of 10 non-Olympic sports. Members of the Chinese delegation, averaged 23.3 of age, will strive for excellence in both athletic performance and sportsmanship, and try their best to come out on top, for the seventh consecutive time, in both the gold medal table and medal standing at the Games. China first topped the gold medal table at the New Delhi Asian Games in 1982.
The official partners of the Chinese Sports Delegation to Doha 2006 are Nike Sports (China), Qingdao Redcollar, AUPRES SHISEIDO, PepsiCo, Yili Group, SOHU.com and Technogym China.
The 15th Asian Games will be held in Doha, Qatar on December 1-15, 2006. The Games will feature 39 sports and 424 events, with the participation of some 12,000 from 45 countries and regions from Asia, the largest in both scale and number of participants in the Games history. It will also be the last large-scale international multi-sport Games for China before the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.
