|
| English.news.cn 2012-07-18 |
COPENHAGEN, July 17 (Xinhua) -- As Denmark's athletes begin to arrive at London's Olympic Village for the 2012 Summer Games, the country's top sports official said the event will inspire Danish national pride and medal-winning performances.
"We see it as the most important sports event in the world, and that is why we have always participated in it... except once, when we did not have the money to go there," said Karl Christian Koch, Secretary General of Denmark's National Olympic Committee (DNOC).
In an interview with Xinhua on Monday, Koch said that the Olympic Games "give Danes a feeling of being one people."
"We have 26 different sports taking place at the same place in the world, every four years, and that creates a lot of interest in sport in general, and in being a Dane and a Danish citizen," he added.
Denmark has never hosted an Olympic Games but has participated in every edition of the modern, summer games since they were inaugurated in Athens in 1896, excepting the 1904 St. Louis games.
The DNOC was founded in 1905, and merged in 1993 with the Sports Confederation of Denmark (SCD), the national body for top-level sports, where Koch also holds the post of Managing Director.
A small, Nordic country of 5.5 million people, Denmark sent just eight athletes to the 1896 games, which saw 245 athletes from 14 nations compete in nine sports genres. The country sent its biggest contingent of 179 athletes to the last London Olympics in 1948, where it recorded its single-largest haul of 20 medals.
The London Olympics 2012 runs from July 27 to August 12 and features nearly 10,500 athletes from 204 countries and regions competing in 26 sports and 39 disciplines. This includes the 113-member Danish Olympic team, whose athletes will participate in 17 disciplines, the DNOC says.
Denmark aims to win eight medals based on performances in its traditional strengths including badminton, cycling, handball, rowing, sailing, swimming, kayaking and tennis, the DNOC says.
That means one medal more than the two gold, two silver and three bronze that the country won at the previous Beijing Olympics 2008, where it fielded 84 athletes and ranked 30th in the medals table.
Koch said it is "very tough competition" for "a small country like Denmark to try and extend its medals tally," yet Denmark has won between six and eight medals at every Olympics over the past two decades.
Furthermore, since 1896, Danish athletes have won a total 171 Olympic medals, including 41 gold, 64 silver and 66 bronze, with the biggest medal hauls in sailing (26 medals), cycling (22 medals) and rowing (19 medals).
Individual stars include sailors Paul Elvstroem, who won a record four Olympic gold medals in a row between 1948 and 1960 in the Firefly and Finn categories, and Jesper Bank who took gold in 1992 and 2000 in the Match Racing category.
Famous Danish teams include the lightweight four rowing squad led by Eskild Ebbesen, which captured three gold medals between 1996 and 2008, and the women's handball team, which won gold three times in a row between 1996 and 2004.
Koch said that Denmark's success in team sports springs from "our social contract: that we like to do sports together... that gives us an advantage when it comes to winning medals in these disciplines."
What's more, the country's investment in high-level sport helps find and hone the best talent. Koch said the country invests 300 million Danish kroner (49.5 million U.S. dollars) annually in developing so-called elite sports, including Olympic disciplines.
"We have a very good system here in Denmark where the government supports the really top athletes and has done so for nearly thirty years now," Koch said.
The system provides top athletes the financial and personal flexibility to dedicate up to 10 years of their life on their sport, and still pursue their studies and career part time.
A network of sports clubs also gives youngsters easy access to popular sports such as football, handball and gymnastics, as well as traditional sports like rowing and sailing, where Danish athletes have often led the competition.
"People come here for the sport but also to get a social life," Koch said of Danish sport-club culture.
He added that the national sports development system also provides "a connecting thread" between talented youngsters and top-quality coaches who "can give the young talent the time needed to be a child but also make them work very hard."
Meanwhile, the SCD and DNOC implement an anti-doping program in compliance with international rules to stamp out abusive practices, including by conducting doping tests both in and out of competition.
This year's games will witness the biggest anti-doping exercise in Olympic history, with half of all competitors, and all medal winners, to be tested for drugs.
Koch said it is difficult to know well all athletes from across the spectrum of Olympic disciplines given that "there are a total of 26 sports taking place in the same location." Moreover, the London Olympics comes in a summer filled with big sports events such as the Euro 2012 football championship, the Wimbledon tennis tournament and the Tour de France cycling race.
"But once we go into the games, we are fully assured that although Danes may not know every athlete in the team, they will watch closely those who have potential to win a medal," Koch added.
-------------------------------------------------
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น