New FISU President Hails 26th Summer Universiade at FISU Press Conference
SHENZHEN – At a Press Conference today, August 11th, the newly elected FISU President Claude-Louis Gallien addressed the media at the splendid MMC built for the 26th Summer Universiade in Shenzhen, China.
In terms of size, the 26th Universiade will be the most impressive in FISU history. After Beijing in 2001 (Summer) and Harbin in 2009 (Winter), it’s the third time that China will host a Universiade. The coastal city of Shenzhen has made major investments to offer top-level infrastructures as 60 top-notch sports venues (41 for competitions and 19 for training) will be used.
The Organizing Committee of the 26th Summer Universiade has set up a very ambitious sports program – in addition to the compulsory disciplines, 11 optional sports were added to the program, a total of 24: athletics, basketball, volleyball, football, fencing, judo, table tennis, tennis, artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, swimming, diving, water polo, badminton, golf, sports hooting, sailing and windsurfing, cycling, chess, archery, beach volley, taekwondo, weightlifting and aerobics. In all, more than 300 gold medals will be distributed! Due to the added number of sports, FISU is expecting a rise in participation because of this very intensive program.
Regarding the team sports 129 teams have been broken down into groups in four sports: water polo (men and women) volleyball (men and women), basketball (men and women) and finally football (men and women).
All athletes will be accommodated under the best possible conditions, which is not an easy task, knowing that more than 10,000 people will be coming to take part in the Universiade.
The Athletes’ Village is truly magnificent and offers all the services required for our sports-students and officials.
Speaking about the Media, FISU will have the biggest TV coverage so far in its history. UBS as Host broadcaster will provide live feeds from 20 sports (out of 24) to millions of homes around the globe, with a total of more than 250 hours of live signals available. UBS also produced for this purpose, as per FISU requirements, a brand new, state of the art IBC as integral part of the MMC, where all domestic and foreign media have all necessary resources to perform their professional duties.
For the first time, FISU will offer on its dedicated website (www.fisu.tv), more than 100 hours of live streaming and 30 hours of Video on Demand content, including Daily highlights (2 times per day, 26 min each).
Concurrent with the Universiade, there is the FISU Conference, which is an educational event giving the opportunity to the students-athletes and officials of the delegations to take part in an international academic conference supervised by FISU and hosted by the university of the host city of the Games.
The main topic of the Conference is “University Sport: From Culture of the “How” to Culture of the “Why”. The Future Starts Here”.
Five subthemes have also been defined:
1 – Impact of great sports events- Olympic Games and Universiades
2 – Education, Ethics and sport
3 – Healthy lifestyle promotion at university: education research and strategies for preventive and therapeutic intervention
4 – Anticipating new practices and events in university sports
5 – University Sport Industry: Development through positive exploration
The Conference of the Shenzhen Universiade will take place from August 13th to 16th at the Shenzhen University (SZU).
Universiade Participation statistics so far:
Men: 1,458
Women: 1,058
Officials: 1,525
Countries: 143
For more info contact FISU Press Officer Christian Pierre at c.pierre@fisu.net.
Right-free photos on simple request.