Transcript of remarks by SCST at media session in Paris, France

     Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Mr Kevin Yeung, at a media session after visiting the Olympic Village in Paris today (July 25, Paris time):
 
Reporter: There are lots of first-time athletes going to the Olympics from Hong Kong. What does it mean for the sports sector and the SAR (Special Administrative Region)? And also, after visiting the facilities, what further support is the Government going to give the athletes during their time in Paris?
 
Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism: This time we have quite a number of new athletes joining or coming to competing at the Olympics for the first time, which means that we have a very good training system, having new athletes coming in, having very high standard athletes starting to emerge in our system, which I think is very important for Hong Kong. Because we are not just looking at one or two excellent athletes, we would like to have a system that could continuously produce athletes up to the world standard. That's very encouraging to us and to everyone in Hong Kong.
 
     And for the continuous support that we are going to give to our athletes for the rest of the Olympics, or actually we haven't started the Olympics yet. We have been in discussion with the Sports Federation & Olympic Committee (Sports Federation & Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China) in the morning, basically to see whether there is anything that they would like the Government to support more. I think they are already providing very good support to the athletes. So we will see in the next few days if there are any more things that they think the Government could do to help. We will certainly provide assistance as necessary.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)