The Japan Times - Bach says athletes will like Paris Olympic Village

"I know that they will be very happy. I even had the opportunity to test the bed and I can assure them they will sleep very well in these beds," Bach said.

The Olympics chief is in Paris to mark Wednesday's one-year-to-go anniversary.

He spent 15 minutes visiting the site in Saint-Denis to the north of Paris and declared the Village to be "extremely well-planned" and "very compact".

The bedrooms in the Athletes' Village have been designed without air conditioning, but organisers promise they will be naturally cooled.

"There the organising committee has taken a great effort and many measures… so that they can produce a temperature six degrees minus (lower) than outside," Bach said.

Later, Bach sailed down the River Seine to get a taste of the unprecedented opening ceremony for the Games.

The ceremony will take the event out of its traditional stadium setting and onto more than 100 boats that will carry teams along the River Seine past the Eiffel Tower.

Bach also got his hands on the newly unveiled Olympic torch, a sleek design made of recycled steel by ArcelorMittal.

Usain Bolt, the now-retired Jamaican sprinter who won eight Olympic gold medals, also tried out the torch and promised: "I will be here next year with my family".

S.Ogawa--JT