The son of China's first Olympian, Liu Changchun, opened a Beijing Games torch relay leg in Shenyang on Thursday. Liu was the sole Chinese athlete at the 1932 Los Angeles Games, competing in the heats of the 100 and 200 metres. He was also part of a small team from China who went to the Berlin Olympics four years later. “I am passing on my father's Olympic dream today,” his son Liu Hongtu told Xinhua. Chance for rain There is a 41 percent chance of rain for the Aug. 8 opening ceremony of the Games, Chen Zhenlin, deputy director of the Forecast & Disaster Prevention Division of the China Meteorological Bureau told a news conference this week. The figure was based on analysis of weather reports in the area immediately around the stadium since 1975, he said. The weather is of particular concern to organizers since plans to put a roof on the National Stadium, where the ceremony will take place, was abandoned in a string of cost-cutting measures in 2004. Website re-launched Beijing organizers relaunched the official website (www.beijing2008.cn) in “Games time” mode on Wednesday and said they expected it to receive hundreds of millions hits over the next two months. “We are already receiving a million hits a day and we are expecting a growth of 10 times or more in those figures,” said Wang Hui, spokeswoman for the organizing committee (BOCOG). Uniforms unveiled The uniforms for the hostesses and flagraisers for the Olympic Games were unveiled at a ceremony in Beijing on Thursday. The women will be dressed in traditional Chinese silk dresses in “white jade”, “blue and white porcelain”, green, blue and pink. The men will wear striking high collared “Mao suits”, also in white. No joint march North Korea has rejected South Korea's call for talks to discuss a joint march at the opening and closing ceremonies of next month's Beijing Olympics, officials said Friday. The South tried to send a message to North Korean officials in early July after International Olympic Committee head Jacques Rogge proposed the joint march in a letter to the two Koreas.
