Filipino picked to carry Olympic torch in China

By Associated Press

BEIJING–A Filipino marketing manager and an American who works with Chinese orphans are among eight foreigners living in China who have been picked to join in the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch run across the country, organizers said Friday.

Marcos Antonio Torres was picked from among 262 applicants in a contest organized by Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group, an Olympic sponsor, and the government newspaper China Daily. Each will carry the torch for 200 meters on Chinese soil.

Torres is a marketing manager in Beijing who launched an online campaign to appeal for votes. He said it made him a celebrity in his homeland.

“It started out with one e-mail which I forwarded to people in my address book. After that, I wrote a blog, and then a day or two after there were over 1,000 blogs about my appeal,” he told The Associated Press.

“Then I went to the Philippines for national holidays and I was invited by TV and radio. In fact, it wasn’t just any TV and radio shows. I appeared on the No. 1 radio station in the Philippines,” he said.

Torres has been living and working in the Chinese capital since June 2006. He also writes for Metrozine, which he describes as the top bilingual magazine in Beijing.

He wanted to witness the 2008 Olympics so much he declined an opportunity to move to Shanghai.

In his desire to become an Olympic torchbearer, Torres “e-mailed everyone [he] possibly [knew] including [his] office e-mail address,” which connected over 400 persons in nine cities worldwide, to ask them to vote for him.

In the website www.pinoytorchbearer.com, he said that even company founder Moira Moser voted for him.

Numerous blogs, websites, television and radio stations in the Philippines have supported him in his dream.

A sports buff, Torres was captain of his college’s volleyball team and had won amateur badminton tournaments. He also enjoys bowling and playing tennis.

Meanwhile, American Jenny Bowen, from San Francisco, lives in Beijing and runs a foundation to help Chinese orphans. People who answered the phone at the foundation’s Hong Kong office said she was in the United States and not immediately available for comment.

The other winners come from India, Venezuela, German, Russia, Japan and Colombia. They will be among 19,400 runners who are to carry the torch across China for the games next August.

Lenovo hopes the Games will help to make it a global brand following its 2005 acquisition of IBM Corp.’s personal computer unit. The Beijing-based company’s designers created the 2008 Olympic torch.

The final selection was made by a panel of Lenovo and China Daily employees after nearly 300,000 people voted in a month-long online campaign, according to the newspaper.

Candidates had to show an appreciation of Chinese culture and history and a devotion to communicating the “real China” to the world, the China Daily said.

The winners still require approval by the Beijing Organizing Committee of the games.

Other winners were:

• Meena Barot, from India, a business manager in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang.

• Yoshitoshi Mizuya, from Nagano, Japan, chairman of a Beijing-based computer company.

• Luis Hong-Sanchez, from Colombia, a student in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai.

• Yury Ilyakhin, from Moscow, general manager of a Beijing information technology company.

• Deirdre Smyth, who has dual British-Venezuelan nationality, a graphic designer in Beijing.

• Werner Ebel, from Berlin, a civil engineer in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou.

Beijing organizers plan to stage the longest torch relay in Olympic history — a 137,000-kilometer (85,000-mile), 130-day route across five continents.

There have been controversies over its proposed passage through Tibet and Taiwan. Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as part of its territory, rejected Beijing’s terms for inclusion on the route. Tibet independence supporters accuse Beijing of using the relay to convey a false message of harmony in the troubled Himalayan region that communist troops occupied in 1951. With a report from Cyril L. Bonabente, Inquirer Research

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