Organizers of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games announced Monday that the Olympic flame could pass by Mt. Everest en route to Beijing. Yang Binyuan said, “we’re planning to take the Olympic flame to Mount Everest, it’s a project we’re studying”.
AFP reports that the move could be seen as a highly contentious one because most of the Himalayan mountain range lies within Tibet, which has been ruled by China since it sent in the military to “liberate” the Himalayan region in 1950.
Yang said that construction of the 37 sporting infrastructures, including 31 in Beijing, being built by the Games, would be finished by the end of 2007 and once the sites are completed organizers plan to host about 40 test events, including the Paralympic Games.
