updated 9:16 a.m. ET Feb. 26, 2006

TURIN, Italy - Even before they’re over, the Winter Games in Turin are being overshadowed by Beijing, with expectations soaring that the 2008 Summer Olympics will be like none other.

Beijing Games organizers can be found at venues all over Turin, videotaping security procedures and working in ticketing offices, methodically adjusting the playbook for 2008.

Executives with Johnson & Johnson, conspicuous in identical company coats, are touring the city, scouting for marketing ideas for China. The company only became an Olympic sponsor in July, too late to do much in Turin, executives said.

“The Beijing Games are like the Olympics to the power of two,” said Scott Kronick, head of China operations for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, who spent a week in Turin scouting ways his clients could use the Beijing Games to promote themselves.

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Even for an event prone to hype, the buzz over Beijing is truly Olympic. Major players, from the International Olympic Committee to the corporate sponsors who help fund the games, anticipate that the first ever Olympics in China will generate more attention and more money and lend new energy to the 110-year-old movement.

The Beijing Games offer an irresistible combination, bringing together the globally popular sporting extravaganza with a China that is a fast growing large economy and a rapidly rising geopolitical presence.

Beijing will host the first Olympics held in a developing nation in 20 years. For the IOC and Olympic sponsors, that means the opportunity to tap a new, increasingly affluent market of avid sports fans and consumers.

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Few hosts have as much riding on the games as Beijing. Past Olympics have been billed as coming-out parties — think 1964 in Tokyo or 2000 for Australia — to announce the host’s arrival on the world stage. Turin saw the games as an opportunity to refashion its image from a rust-belt manufacturing center to a tourist and convention destination. But China’s communist government hopes 2008 will transform its relationship with the world and with its own people.

“We want to convey the image of a China that is more open and that is making progress,” Jiang Xiaoyu, a senior official with the Beijing organizing committee, told reporters in Turin.

The two and a half years before the games open are unlikely to be trouble-free. Beijing resembles a huge construction zone, its streets clogged with traffic, its air with pollution. Human rights issues may intrude; in Turin, Tibetans and members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement staged low-key protests against civil rights abuses by the Chinese government. Concerns persist about whether international media will be able to operate freely in China come 2008.

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