Ethiopia's Olympic 10,000 metres champion Haile Gebrselassie said yesterday that he supports South Africa's bid to host the 2004 Olympic Games in Cape Town.

"I share President Nelson Mandela's view that staging the Olympic Games in Cape Town would signal the start of an African renaissance," he said in a statement issued by South Africa's embassy in the Ethiopian capital. "Africa and its sports people have competed all over the world. We want the Olympic Games on our continent, and we want it now," he added.

Gebrselassie said he admired facilities in South Africa when he took part in last year's world cross country championships in Cape Town. The Organisation of African Unity, the Supreme Council for Sports in Africa and many African sportsmen and sportswoman have endorsed the South African bid for the Games, the statement added.