President of the World Curling Federation: Beijing will do an excellent job

BEIJING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Asked for wishes to China on the 100-day countdown to the Beijing Winter Olympics, President of the World Curling Federation Kate Caithness recalled the golden memories of 2008, saying "Beijing will do an excellent job, 100 days can't wait."

Thirteen years ago when she served on the Paralympic Games Committee, Caithness used to present flowers to medalists in Water Cube, which was famous for witnessing Michael Phelps' eight-golds feat.

Now the swimming pool was shifted into an ice pitch to hold the 2021 World Wheelchair Curling Championship and the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics, by which Caithness was amazed.

"I was very impressed with the layout of the field of play, more impressed with the screen that they changed. The technology has been done with this and have done an excellent job," Caithness said.

The screen impressing the president is one of the high-tech products introduced by the technology group of the arena, it sticks on the wall and is perpendicular to the curling pitch with 170 square meters in size, presenting the situation of four homes and painting curling's track in time.

When she was asked to describe Beijing 2022 with two words, Caithness listed "safe" first to wish all the people involved in next year good health. She stressed the dominant importance of safety in particular and sincerely appreciated the pandemic prevention efforts organized by the host.

"To be fair, we must make sure that we're in a safe environment and this is very special," Caithness said. "At the end of the day, our athletes have to focus on their performance, and by feeling safe in the environment, they can then focus on the games and their performance within the games."

"So far this is working very well. From the travel to Beijing and once we've arrived in Beijing there was an excellent job."

Having heart-to-heart empathy in wheelchair-curdling athletes, Caithness secondly proposed "ability" as a reminder to audiences that "what we are witnessing is these athletes who are on wheelchairs playing our sport. The sport is played from people in wheelchairs, not wheelchair curling adapted to people with disability."

As the first female president of the World Curling Federation and an Olympic Winter Sports Federation, Caithness believed the IOC officials would be delighted to see all the facilities in every sport around Beijing. She didn't hide her pride in presenting flowers to curling athletes again at Beijing 2022.

"I will present once more flowers or whatever the organizing committee decided to give apart from the medals I will be presenting again," Caithness said, "and it's curling, very very special to me."