VANCOUVER, B.C. April 2, 2009 - With only 16 months
before the inaugural 2010 Summer Youth Games in Singapore, finding a focus for the fledgling event is proving to be a challenge.
The IOC created the Youth Olympic Games in 2007, fulfilling the dream of IOC president Jacques Rogge. But Gilbert
Felli, executive director of Olympic Games for the IOC, says there are still some hurdles to overcome.
"One thing
is lacking at the moment and we are working hard on it is the reach of the youth," said Felli. "How we are going
to embrace all the kids to come and be part of these Games, not only as competitors but part of the Games, there we still
have a lot of work to do."
The Canadian Olympic committee is also struggling to figure out how it will work the
Games into its own plans. Canada will field a team, but beyond that doesn't know much more.
The fact the Games
are the same year as Vancouver's Olympics creates a logistical challenge, said COC executive director Chris Rudge, but
the issue is bigger than that.
"We don't have nearly the information we would have going into a normal Olympic
Games," Rudge said. "No site visits up to this point, no idea of what the village will be like, the venues and everything
else because they haven't done this before."
The goal of the Youth Games wasn't a mini-Olympics, said
Felli, but to return to the initial aim of the movement: bringing young people together to celebrate the power of sport.
"At
the time, even the top athletes were 23, 24 (and) when you are 25 you go back to work," Felli said in a recent interview
with The Canadian Press. "Now, with the fact that athletes are competing until age 35, 40 sometimes, then the spirit
has changed."
It's a different approach that makes the Games difficult to sell, Felli said.
"We
have to break the mind of the coaches, of the parents and a lot of people to say OK, we are going to take your kids and put
them together to compete at the highest level but at the same time to be role models to be ambassadors," said Felli,
who was in Vancouver this week to see how preparations for the 2010 Olympics are going.
The sports at the Youth Games
are the same as those at the Olympic Games. Athletes will qualify by winning world or national youth championships.
Young
athletes with that kind of ability already have their eye on competing at the Olympics, so the point of a Youth Olympics has
to be bigger than just the sport, said Rudge.
He said the Olympic community views the Games as a way forward for the
Olympic ideals.
"They would like to see more of that in the world and perhaps less of some of the politics that
goes on the Olympic world," he said. "I think this movement is one way to embrace that."
The fact the
sports are the same is a missed opportunity for the IOC, suggested Dick Ebersol, the chairman of NBC, at a recent convention
in Denver.
"I wish in Singapore, they were trying things like skateboarding, just so the Summer Games could have
a look at something like that," he said.
Rudge said in his opinion, there was potential for the Youth Olympic
movement to act as a test run.
"This could be a way for the Olympics to strategically think about other sports
that might want to come in and see how the sports conduct themselves in a quasi-Olympic kind of environment," he said.
Singapore won the bid for the inaugural Summer Games in February 2008, beating out Moscow.
The Games are being
held August 14-26 and will host 3,200 athletes and 800 officials. Just like an Olympics, the athletes will live in a village
and undergo drug testing, but no new venues are being built.
Also like an Olympics, organizers are depending on sponsorship
for a large part of their budget and the economy is taking a toll.
The budget for Singapore Games is approximately
C$61 million, with C$41 million to come from sponsorship and the rest from the government.
Reports suggest Singapore
has commitments for less than half and has only one major sponsor.
SOURCE: http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Olympics/News/2009/04/02/8977671-ap.html
