College beauties leave boot camp to be Olympic hostesses

Models show the bouquets that will be presented to the Olympic medallists during the unveiling of the outfits, accessories and podium of the Olympic medal ceremony at 798 Art Factory in Beijing, July 17, 2008. [Xinhua]
BEIJING -- Training of the 337 would-be hostesses for the Olympic victory ceremonies will end on Saturday, when the Chinese college beauties graduate from boot camp."I've always dreamed of being a guide hostess for the table tennis athletes at the Olympic venue," said Yang Xu, 19, one of the 300-odd young women selected from more than 5,000 candidates in Beijing and Shanghai colleges as part of the Olympic volunteers.Just like others, the slim, 170 cm tall Yang has been trained for three short terms with five kinds of courses, including body-shaping exercises, dancing, manners, ceremony processes and basic Olympic-related knowledge."It has been a tough job. We are often asked to keep a good-looking standing gesture on the standardized 5-centimeter-high heels for more than one hour, so that my T-shirt has been drenched with sweat even in the air-conditioned room," Yang said."Our teacher sometimes was seen taking a pack of broken heels for repair, a measure of our suffering," the young woman said with a bitter smile.The beauties had fought off furious competition to secure their chance to "enjoy the beautiful suffering" in the temporary "charm school", a vocational school in Beijing's northern Changping District.The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the 29th Olympiad (BOCOG) selected 297 beauties from a dozen Beijing colleges such as the Communication University of China, the University of International Relations, and Beijing Technology and Business University, said Wang Ning, deputy division chief of the Sport Representation and Victory Ceremony Division of the Culture and Ceremonies Department, BOCOG.The other 40 were selected from more than 1,700 candidates from Shanghai top-level universities, Wang added.