RECORD BREAKER: Famous U.S. swimming athlete Michael Phelps wins 200 meters freestyle at U.S. Olympic swimming trials on July 1 in Omaha, Nebraska. He is bid to surpass Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals at the Beijing Olympic Games

All the lights were on in Qiu jiduan Gymnasium at Beijing Normal University (BNU) on July 17, just three weeks before the start of the Summer Olympic Games. Workers were performing a final test on the lighting system in the newly built sports complex that will serve as the exclusive training headquarters for the U.S. Olympic team.

The gymnasium, which has an area of 16,000 square meters, is named after Qiu Jiduan, a university alumnus who donated 20 million yuan ($2.93 million) to the project. It took about two years to build the facility, which cost more than 100 million yuan ($14.64 million). The gymnasium has five floors with three above ground that provide tennis, basketball and volleyball courts, a gymnastics area, swimming pool and track.

"It's a fantastic gymnasium. Everything is first-class," Kevin Han, Manager of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) Sports Partnerships, told Xinhua News Agency on July 19.

The USOC signed an agreement with BNU in early 2007 to build a high performance center and training headquarters at the university for American athletes to prepare for the Beijing Games. The USOC planned to spend $500,000 on the center for housing, training and dining facilities.

After the USOC selected BNU for the center's site, Steve Roush, the organization's Chief of Sport Performance, said, "It allows the U.S. Olympic athletes to train in conditions that are conducive to high performance, and it provides the comforts of home with great facilities, good restaurants and sleeping space for our team before the Games."

Besides the state-of-the-art sports complex, the university also provides a convenient location in northwest Beijing that is only about a 15 minutes' drive to the Olympic Village.

Working out

The U.S. athletes started moving into the center on July 25 to acclimate themselves prior to the Games. According to the USOC, about two thirds of the over 600-member U.S. athlete delegation of more than 20 teams will use the facilities at BNU to prepare for the Summer Games that run on August 8-24.

This is not the first time that a U.S. Olympic delegation has built its headquarters outside an Olympic village. The USOC established a similar site for U.S. athletes at the American University of Greece for the 2004 Athens Games. Unlike other delegations whose use of official Olympic training centers are limited by the schedules of the facilities, the U.S. team will have exclusive access to the sports compound at BNU.

To create a training center with features and conditions similar to its training base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the U.S. Olympic team has transported its own sports equipment to BNU. The equipment includes wrestling mats, gymnastic apparatuses and equipment cleansers, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency. The USOC's official partners provided most of the equipment.

"We've worked with our partners as well as equipment manufacturers to discuss what equipment they would like to have in the high performance center," said Derek Gallup, Vice President of Fitness Operations of 24 Hour Fitness, the official fitness center sponsor of the U.S. Olympic team.

Gallup told Beijing Review that the California-based fitness club, which formed a partnership with the USOC in 2000, has been supporting the U.S. Olympic team by setting up equipment in Colorado Springs and Olympic host cities. But this is the first time that it will be sending a team of trainers to Beijing for the athletes. The company selected 21 "fitness ambassadors" from more than 4,000 trainers to travel to Beijing in three groups throughout the duration of the Games. Each group will consist of seven trainers who will stay in the capital for approximately two weeks.

"Our main task over there would be to make sure that the facilities and equipment run smoothly," said Kurt Weinreich, Jr., a certified master trainer who has been working with 24 Hour Fitness for 10 years and was chosen as a fitness ambassador. Weinreich is in the third group, which will leave for Beijing on August 13. He and his team members will provide support to athletes from all sports disciplines at BNU's center.

Weinreich said he is very excited about the Olympic Games and expects the U.S. team to have great results.

"We were watching the Olympic trials here," Weinreich said. "They were really exciting. There were a lot of American and world records being broken during the trials."

At the last Summer Olympic Games in Athens four years ago, the United States topped both the gold-medal count and overall medal tables with 36 and 102, respectively.

Chowing down

The USOC will provide chefs and caterers for meals for the athletes at BNU. According to the contract with the university, the U.S. team will have access to three restaurants on the university campus, one of which can accommodate and feed about 400 athletes at a time.

Earlier U.S. reports said the Americans were bringing their own food to China, fearing lax safety standards and the possibility of steroids being added to their meals. Nicole Saunches, Manager of Marketing Communications at USOC, said the organization's corporate partners, such as Kellogg, which will provide bars and breakfast cereals, and Tyson Foods, which will provide meats, are shipping their products to China, because they have agreements with the USOC to provide them free of charge.

This is not the first time that the USOC has arranged to bring food to the host country during an Olympics. The organization shipped more food to Athens than it is now sending to China, Saunches said. In an interview with China Youth Daily in March, Roush said the U.S. athletes who are staying at the Olympic Village would eat food provided by the facilities there, while some coaches, trainers and other members of the U.S. delegation at the training headquarters at BNU would consume food transported from the United States.

Chilling out

The university also has implemented strict security measures to ensure that outsiders do not disturb the American athletes. Administrators have divided the campus into two parts from July 20 to August 30-an enclosed area for the gymnasium and apartment buildings rented by the U.S. Olympic team and a guarded area for the rest of the campus. The enclosed area has been cordoned off by wire fencing, and even students and professors are not allowed in. Only BNU students and faculty with valid identification cards are allowed to enter the guarded section.

University administrators also are requiring that windows facing the training center be closed between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. More than 500 security guards are on the university grounds, and 100 more will be added later, according to a recent article in The Beijing News.

(Reporting from New York, with additional reporting by Ding Ying in Beijing)