Athletics festival planned for Seattle

SEATTLE – An international athletics competition including Olympic sports from basketball to speedskating is planned for Seattle next June.

The competition, tentatively titled the USA-China Invitational, is modeled after the Goodwill Games held here in 1990 and will be billed as “The Road to Beijing,” a reference to the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The event is expected to last four days, with expanded plans for 2006 and an option for a third event in 2007. It’s being planned by the Seattle Organizing Committee, the same organization that staged Seattle’s Goodwill Games.

A U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman confirmed there have been discussions about the event, but said there was no final agreement.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Friday that letters of commitment to participate have been sent by both the U.S. Olympic Committee and the Chinese Olympic Committee to the Seattle Organizing Committee.

The Seattle committee’s plans for the event also include an international arts festival and a major health summit.

“We’ll have the athletic competition as our foundation,” said Jim Dwyer, chairman of the Seattle Organizing Committee.

The festival will include as many as 1,000 athletes, organizers said. The United States and China are the principal countries involved, but the field will include selected athletes from many other Pacific Rim countries, competing in a “finals only” format, organizers said.

Planned athletic events include track and field, archery, diving, table tennis, badminton and short-track speedskating.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is “very supportive” of the event, a spokeswoman said, adding that many details still need to be worked out.