SHANGHAI, October 11 -- Zhou Taitong, GOC Standing Vice Chairman and Vice Mayor of Shanghai, announced that both the number of participating countries and regions and the number of participants in this year’s Special Olympics Games exceeded those in all previous ones. A total of 165 countries and regions sent delegations to this Special Olympics Games, 164 being participating delegations and one (North Korea) being an observing delegation. The number of Special Olympics athletes who participated in the games totaled 7,450.

At the Opening Ceremonies held on the evening of October 2, over ten thousand athletes and coaches entered the field. Even so, the time taken for them all to enter was only “one hour eight minutes and 53 seconds,” this being the shortest of all entrance ceremonies in the history of Special Olympics Games.

The “Global Policy Summit Forum on the Welfare of People with Intellectual Disabilities”, held on October 3, was the first high-standard summit forum in the history of the Special Olympics. Nearly one thousand political leaders and celebrities from different countries attended the forum. The Forum issued the “Support Manifesto”, calling for expanded opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities to receive integrated education and employment, and for strengthening the support for them and their families. Over 70 organizations and individuals signed the Manifesto, promising to take positive action in their respective fields to advance the implementation of such policies over the next few months.

The Law Enforcement Torch Run of this Special Olympics Games had the widest coverage, followed the longest route, had the most participants and the largest social influence in the history of the World Special Olympics Games. After the sacred fire of the 2007 SOWSG was collected from Greece during June, torch runs were subsequently held in London (Britain), Cairo (Egypt), Washington (USA), Tokyo (Japan), Seoul (South Korea), and Sydney (Australia). It was then relayed throughout cities in China, including Beijing, Harbin, Dalian, Xi'an, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi, Guangzhou, Jiaxing, Wenzhou and Nanjing, as well as Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions.Timothy Shriver, Chairman of the Special Olympics Inc., announced that the sacred fire of the 2007 SOWSG was relayed throughout five continents on earth, covering a route as long as 35 thousand kilometers. Globally, via various media, there were around 900 million people watching and studying the whole process of relaying the sacred fire.

The publicity and news reporting of this Special Olympics Games also created new records. During the Games, the GSC conducted a series of 34 press conferences. There were more than one hundred thousand reports published by foreign media about the Special Olympics Games. The SOWSG Official Website received more than 122 million visits.

As the statistics show, there were a total of 1,400 reporters from over 120 countries and regions covering the Special Olympics Games, this scale of coverage being unprecedented in the history of the Games. Eighty countries and regions’ TV stations aired the 2007 SOWSG Opening Ceremonies.

According to officials from the Special Olympics Inc., the success of the 2007 SOWSG has created a “Chinese Craze” in the media of different countries.