New Delhi

The making of Beijing Olympics

BubblE play: Beijing’s National Aquatics Centre, better known as Water Cube, has been specially designed for water sports at the upcoming Olympics.

NEW DELHI: The mounting excitement surrounding the upcoming Beijing Olympics is galvanising everyone globally. As the world watches with bated breath and all of China mobilises for the big show, Discovery Channel is getting set to tell viewers how this nation of over a billion people is gearing up to host the spectacular extravaganza.

Premiering this coming Monday, the channel’s four-part series “Ultimate Olympics” will take a no-holds-barred look at the Chinese innovation and endeavour to organise the world’s biggest sporting event.

The series showcases the Asian country undergoing a big makeover, highlighting its high-tech athletic preparations, construction of colossal infrastructures and utilising science and technology to combat foreseeable challenges.

As the host city, Beijing’s mission is to set the stage for an Olympics that would be technologically robust, green and – no guesses for that – distinctively Chinese. Besides coming out with grand designs, China also has to find solutions to pollution, road congestion and, most significantly, bridging the language barrier.

What makes a gold medallist is the million-dollar question posed to Chinese athletes who are gunning for gold in the name of sporting excellence, national pride and Olympic history. Since 1988 China has steadily climbed up the Olympic medal table, but at Beijing Olympics-2008 it wants the Number One spot.

To find out how the country is preparing to claim the first place, “Ultimate Olympics” goes behind closed doors to meet Olympic hopefuls and study their round-the-clock preparations, strengthened by an army of sports scientists and coaches.

As the number of cars on Beijing’s roads increases by leaps and bounds – around 1,000 a day – and exhaust emissions make up almost a third of the city’s air pollution, city’s environmental Chief has to do something substantial to change the smoggy grey skies to blue for the Olympics to be seen as a success. Working in tandem are transport chiefs who hope to ease congestion with an ambitious and radical solution.

Landscape architects are creating the world’s first ever Olympic Forest Park that will act as a green lung for the Capital. The new greener consciousness that is spreading through Beijing is reflected in the new infrastructure that is being put in place, including the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube – stadiums reflecting innovative architecture and a blueprint for the future.

Sports connoisseurs will also see the people behind the scenes and share their excitement, hopes and sense of responsibility as they each work towards the common goal of making this the most successful and technologically advanced games so far in the history of the Olympics.

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