Dan Reardon and his family had been rushing to attract more votes to their online profile at the "Olympic Families Tour Beijing" website, as the initial deadline for a chance to tour the host cities of the Beijing Games via this public campaign was May 31.

The campaign is aimed at inviting the 10 most popular families according to a public vote to the Chinese capital and the other three co-host cities of the Games this summer.

Dan Reardon from the United States poses with his family for the "Olympic Family Tour Beijing"campaign.

Reardon, who lives in California, said he instantly felt his family had a good shot at winning one of the available berths after the campaign kicked off on April 9.

"We want to experience the Beijing Games and witness how the Games changes the cities and the country," said Reardon, a marketing coordinator who works for the Beijing office of an American company. He came to the Chinese capital three months ago with his wife Molly and their one-year-old daughter Annie.

By May 21, 6,849 families, including 287 non-Chinese participants, had registered on www. familiy.beijing2008.cn.

"More families will get involved in this at the last minute and we have seen the number rise suddenly by about 5,000 in the last three days," said Wang Nan, one of the organizers from the official website.

"We never expected so many families would be interested," he said. "A lot of people told me they love the idea."

Besides the weekly promotional program in Beijing and Qingdao, which will host the sailing regatta next year, the organizers also made a promotional tour of the United States, which boasts the highest number of aspiring Olympic families.

But entering the competition is no mean feat. Before registering, people have to pass a quiz on one of the four Olympic cities of Beijing, Shanghai -- which will host preliminary soccer matches -- Hong Kong and Qingdao. They must also 'pass' an online sports game, such as soccer or baseball.

"To pass the tests before registering is not easy and I am afraid the tests may have excluded some people," said Wang.

"It took me four and a half hours to register," said Zhou Chenguang, 38, a physical education teacher at a local primary school in Beijing.

"Especially the online game, which was quite difficult. It was a baseball game and I failed many times before finally cracking it."

In the first phase of the program, all the participating families need to attract votes from visitors to the website by using their photographs, a family slogan and some text to express their passion for the Olympics.

Each of the short-listed 100 families must then write an Olympic blog covering topics chosen by the organizers once a week. The public will later vote for their favorite families, either online or via mobile phone, with the winners to be named at the end of June.

"I've been to all the places -- Shanghai, Hong Kong and Qingdao -- but now we are very interested to go and look at them just from the Olympic perspective, and see what they are doing to prepare, even the places like Qingdao, they must be very excited about having that attention and opportunity," Reardon said.

The 10 families that are ultimately chosen will visit China from August 8-16 to watch the Olympic test events, including the 2007 Qingdao International Regetta.

They will also get to visit the Olympic venues as well as historical sites in and around the host cities.