The first Youth Olympic Games: innovations, challenges and ethical issues

In 1990, the President of the European Association of National Olympic Committees, Jacques Rogge, inaugurated the European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF), held for the first time in Brussels in 1991. The athletes were between 15 and 18 years, from 33 different countries, and competed in 10 summer sports. Two years later the first EYOF for winter sports was held in Aosta (Italy), and since then the event has taken place both in summer and winter every two years. After the success of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games the Australian Olympic Committee decided to follow suit, and organised the Australian Youth Olympic Festival (AYOF), first held in January 2001 and every two years thereafter. From a modest beginning in 2001 including participants competing in 10 summer sports, the festival has grown significantly into 22 sports, comprising 2500 athletes between 13-19 years of age, representing over 20 countries in 2009. During the 119th Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Guatemala City in July 2007 the IOC, now with Jacques Rogge as President, decided to introduce a new sporting event for young athletes - the Youth Olympic Games (YOG). (IOC, 2009) The YOG were first held in Singapore, 14-26 August 2010, with 3500 athletes between 14 and 18 years of age (birth years 1992-1995) from all 205 National Olympic Committees. The sports programme encompassed all 26 sports on the program of the London 2012 Summer Games, albeit with a limited number of disciplines. Altogether there were 201 events, some introducing new game forms to the Olympics, and some introducing mixed gender and mixed-nationality team competitions. (IOC 2009, 2010) Innsbruck is the venue for the first Winter YOG in 2012, and future editions of the YOG will follow the traditional cycle of four years, with Summer YOG in the year of the senior Winter Olympic Games and Winter YOG in the year of the senior Summer Olympic Games. The aims of the YOG are to educate, engage and inspire young people around the world to participate in sports and adopt the Olympic Values. Obviously, the aim will be to bring together the most talented athletes from around the world to participate in high-level competitions, perhaps as a stepping-stone to the Olympic Games. But the idea is also that the sporting competitions should be held in an educational and cultural environment, so the athletes stay at the Youth Olympic Village, by analogy with the Olympic Games, and there is an educational and cultural programme to provide experiences and to support learning. (IOC 2007, 2010) As Rogge says: ‘The vision of the Youth Olympic Games is to inspire young people around the world to participate in sport,’ but also to teach ‘the traditional values of the Olympic Games, which are the pursuit of excellence, friendship and respect for each other, respect for social values like the environment. We also want them to learn about important issues such as the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, the dangers of doping or their role as sports ambassadors in their communities’ (Rogge in Shokoohi, 2010a). Notwithstanding the good intentions the IOC has in creating the YOG, it would be surprising if there were no problems to iron out, or no unintended and undesirable consequences. Let us consider some possible issues