Early to rise, early to bed, and lots of exercise in between: athletes are supposed to be models of clean living, right? But some Olympians have a more healthy lifestyle than others.

For Italian weightlifter Giorgio de Luca, for example, doping is out of the question but coffee, cigarettes, and the occasional drink are all fine.

“We’re aiming for a clean sport,” the 24-year-old from Palermo said, puffing a cigarette outside the Olympic gym in Beijing, watched by his coach.

Several coaches and weightlifters huddled around the ashtrays in front of the gym on Tuesday — a picture that is unlikely to please their Olympic hosts. Beijing has promised to do its utmost to ensure clean air for the Games, and that means smog-free and smoke-free.

Smoking is banned at Olympic venues, and a 100,000-strong puff police is supposed to enforce the rule.

Not that anyone told the smokers at the gym to stub it out. The volunteers at the venue were happily handing out water, taking pictures and chatting with the smokers. Apparently, “smoking ban” is just as ambiguous a phrase as “clean living”.

PHOTO: A man smokes a cigarette as he walks past a billboard advertising the Olympics in central Beijing July 14, 2008. REUTERS/David Gray

In 2004, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao promised that the Beijing Olympics would be “smoke-free”.

So far, though, there has been no word on the rules and regulations that will prevent the world’s most enthusiastic smokers from puffing away while watching the Games this August.

There was brief flurry of excitement around the World Health Organisation’s World No Tobacco Day last May when some officials said the policy would be announced, but it never materialised. The rules, to be decided by the Beijing municipal government, are promsied soon.    

Some 320 million Chinese (and a few expat Westerners) draw on nearly 2 trillion cigarettes every year.

The offer and acceptance of cigarettes is a basic tenet of social and business interraction among men.

That is not just the case in rural China, where the men and women still often referred to as “peasants” might be forgiven for being ignorant of the health issues surrounding smoking.  

World and Olympic 110 metres hurdles champion Liu Xiang did promotional work for the Baisha Corporation, which sells 75 billion cigarettes a year.  

An executive with one of the top Games’ sponsors told me of a recent visit to the Olympic Tower, the sparkling headquarters of the Beijing organising commitee a couple of miles from the Bird’s Nest Stadium.

She was the only person among 20 or so at the meeting not puffing away, a scene unimaginable these days in large parts of the developed world.

But what is a non-smoking Olympics anyway?

Anyone who hates the very sight (or the merest whiff) of someone slowly killing themselves by cigarette might be disappointed by the laxity of the rules, if the experience of the 2004 Athens Olympics are anything to go by.

Greece has the highest number of smokers per capita in the world but its Games were also supposed to be non-smoking.  But smokers were able to idulge pretty much freely as long as they were not actually sitting in a seat at an Olympic venue. Pictures by Claro Cortes IV (top) and REUTERS/China Daily.