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Madrid’s Mayor Welcomes Media Covering 2016 Inspection

Madrid’s Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon Monday welcomed the national and international media who were in Madrid to cover the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Evaluation Commission inspection of the city’s 2016 bid.

The Mayor asked the media to portray Madrid as “the supportive, open, innovative, warm and dynamic city it is, where no one is a stranger in the way it greets athletes, journalists and visitors alike, with our characteristic outstretched hand”.

Ruiz-Gallardon invited the media “to know and enjoy our city. We want you to form your own view and through that experience to reflect a city striving for greater things. Through you as media the world discovers Madrid, a city dreaming of and working towards being an Olympic city”.

He said, “we hope the members of the (IOC) commission will come to appreciate this way of being and feeling. It is important they understand how honoured we would be to host the Games in 2016”.

Ruiz-Gallardon compared the Olympic and Paralympic Games as the ultimate international meeting in sport where athletes “give form and meaning to the assembly and are spurred on by the Olympic spirit to go further, higher, strong”, to the Madrid candidacy. He said, “from the word go, sportspeople have been a major part of this project. They know better than anyone the meaning of effort, teamwork and fair play”.

He added that Madrid 2016 shares with sportspeople “the same commitment to high achievement which has allowed Spanish sport to enjoy the greatest moment in its history. A success we see as a foretaste that hopefully Madrid will achieve”.

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