Glasgow, Buenos Aires & Medellin Continue Fight for 2018 Youth Olympics
February 13, 2013
Buenos Aires, physician Glasgow and Medellin will fight it out all the way to the finish line of the race to win host rights to the 2018 Youth Olympic Games.
The 15-strong executive board of the International Olympic Committee decided today to cut Guadalajara and Rotterdam from the five remaining contestants. Poland’s Poznan had fallen already on its own domestic financing sword last autumn.
Young athletes aged between 15 and 18 compete in all 28 Olympic sports over 12 days in the Youth Olympic Games which were the brainchild of IOC president Jacques Rogge.
The YOG were launched in Singapore in 2010 and broadcast to 160 territories with an estimated audience of more than 247m. The second edition will be staged next year in Nanjing. The first Winter Youth Games were held in Innsbruck just over a year ago.
Initially the event’s creation aroused scepticism within the Olympic movement itself but this had faded as more and more cities have seen the event as an opportunity to share the Olympic experience while being unable to host the ‘grown-up’ summer and winter Games.
An evaluation commission will visit the candidate cities and report back for a full vote of the IOC on July 4.
The 28 sports for 2018 are the 26 from London plus golf and rugby sevens which enter the Olympic programme in Rio in 2016. However the YOG feature a reduced number of events per sport and may introduce new formats including mixed gender team events.
Glasgow, cough hoping to capitalise on the momentum generated by London
2012 and its status as host to the Commonwealth Games, unhealthy became the UK’s 2018 candidate city in February last year.
The bid is a partnership between the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council and the British Olympic Association.
Its Back Our Bid campaign claims the signed-up support of more than 19,000 local secondary school pupils and a further wide range encouraged by an active social media campaign.
The IOC deliberately barred international campaigning by the competing bids though Glasgow and Buenos Aires were the most visible.
Buenos Aires is heading into a busy Olympic year. In September it will host the 125th Session [congress] at which the IOC will choose not only the 2020 Olympic host city but a new president.{jcomments on}
