A car races through a busy street to a highway at 110 kilometres per hour. After making a swift U-turn between two lanes, the vehicle swerves over a traffic barrier with an upward blade. Despite a burst tyre, the driver still has control of his car and slows to a smooth halt.

It is not a scene from a Hollywood action film, but part of a police driver's training course, located at a closed training centre deep in the mountains of northwest Beijing. Thousands of Beijing police will receive the training in the run-up to the Beijing 2008 Games.

The driver-training programme, which began on July 20 and runs to the end of 2007, includes courses like driving down narrow roads, overtaking, intercepting cars and high speed U-turns. It aims to teach Beijing police high-level driving skills so they can drive safely and deal with emergencies during the 2008 Olympic Games.

About 5,000 police, of whom 5 per cent are female, will be selected for the training. Those who pass a test will be eligible to drive patrol cars and service vehicles for the Games, according to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.

The driver training is just a small part of the city's comprehensive Olympic security training project that started in April. It includes more than 30 other training drills, such as anti-terrorism and emergency rescue. More than 100,000 police, armed police, security guards and volunteers are expected to be involved.

"The real number that will be trained for Olympic security will far exceed the estimated 100,000 people," said Zheng Weiping, vice-dean of Beijing People's Police College, where some of the Olympic security drills, including the ongoing driver training, are taking place.

Zheng said the driver-training programme consists of about 100 sessions, each lasting two or three days. A total of 22 faculty members from the college have been chosen to coach the police drivers. "The driving skills taught here are much harder than the requirements for acquiring a driver's licence," Zheng said.

"The courses here are really very demanding," said 34-year-old trainee Mi Haiquan, a police officer from Fengtai District.

Mi, who has been driving for 11 years, said the training programme had corrected several of his long-standing bad habits; he has learnt how to hold the wheel correctly, and how to manoeuvre the clutch, gears, brakes and accelerator properly.

After finishing basic training at the facility, police drivers take a field exercise around Olympic sports venues, hotels and streets, according to Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.

A number of police cars will be refitted in order to run faster and to deal with emergencies.

(China Daily July 28, 2006)