President of the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) Ruben Acosta on Thursday praised Beijing's wholehearted devotion to hosting a successful Olympics Games.
"I believe the Games will be a great success. You may be lack of experience, but you have this," said Acosta, patting his left chest.
As a frequent visitor to Beijing though, Acosta was still deeply impressed by the new look of the Olympic host city.
"The Olympics is in the air of Beijing. We can see it, we can hear it and we can feel it. People here and around the world are all looking forward to tomorrow, the opening of the Games," he said.
The FIVB president showed confidence in this Olympic volleyball tournament, saying "the Chinese women (volleyballers) have made the sport very popular in the country."
According to the ticket sales manager of the Capital Indoor Stadium, one of the two volleyball venues, all the volleyball tickets, nearly 800,000 in total, were sold out.
"I hope every venue, for volleyball and beach volleyball, is full of spectators and we can also have many TV networks worldwide to broadcast the events," said Acosta.
In Athens, the volleyball events attracted more than 3.5 billions TV viewers and the number in Beijing is expected to reach 4 billion, he said.
Acosta was elected the FIVB president for the first time in 1984, taking over from founding president Libaud. In June 2008, he announced he would retire as the chief of FIVB, the world's largest sporting federation in terms of membership.
He will hand over the presidency to the first executive vice president Wei Jizhong from China after the Beijing Games. Wei will officially begin his tenure on Aug. 24.
(Xinhua News Agency August 7, 2008)