The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Coordination Commission for the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games ended its second visit to the city Wednesday, and praised the progress being made by the local organizers.
Following two days of meetings, the commission, headed by IOC Executive Board member Gunilla Lindberg, underlined some of PyeongChang 2018’s recent successes and looked positively on some of its upcoming milestones and planning.
Lindberg said, “we’ve once again seen good progress from PyeongChang 2018 and an excellent team effort from the Organising Committee, all levels of government, and the Korean Olympic Committee. Delivering the Olympic Games can be achieved successfully only by working as a single unit and our Korean colleagues have shown that unity once again on this visit.
“We have been impressed by their ability to collaborate closely – from the provision of skilled administrators at POCOG to the finalization of the venue master plan to ensure that these Games will be a success. The PyeongChang 2018 team is giving its all for the Olympians of 2018.”
The commission singled out the launch of PyeongChang 2018’s new emblem on May 3, 2013, the finalization of the venue master plan, and the progress in defining legacies as areas of particular note.
According to the IOC the locations for all the sports venues for PyeongChang 2018 have now been defined and work is progressing rapidly on the design phase to ensure that all will be ready in time for the test events ahead of the Games.
The commission also noted the important amount of work that had already gone into legacy planning for the venues and legacy planning in general.
PyeongChang 2018 and the commission agreed that while good progress was being made, some areas required additional efforts to ensure success. This included finalizing the accommodation inventory for the Games in order to ensure that the supply matches as closely as possible the needs of the Games; getting the marketing program fully underway; recruiting specialist members of the workforce so as to maximize the transfer of knowledge that PyeongChang can profit from during its observation of the Sochi 2014 Games; and ensuring that a competitive home team will compete in all sports at the 2018 Games.
The commission was also briefed on preparations in areas including sport, transport energy, technology, communications, sustainability and the Paralympic Games.
