Youth Olympic Games
The IOC on Thursday gave its overwhelming approval by show of hands to an initiative dubbed the “Youth Olympic Games,” committing millions of dollars, its institutional reputation and considerable political capital to what was repeatedly described from the assembly floor as a “historic” project.
History, it must be noted, is full of dumb ideas.
This project marks perhaps the key initiative undertaken by Jacques Rogge since he became IOC president in 2001. Former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, speaking Thursday in support of the plan, called it “a very important step of the Olympic movement, maybe the most important step of the last years.”
With all due respect for the assembly as well as for Samaranch and Rogge, I must count myself among the skeptics.
I commend Rogge and the IOC for trying something – something is better than nothing, and the IOC is to be saluted for taking a leadership position. But I have profound reservations about how this is going to do what Rogge and other supporters of the proposal would like to see it do.
I acknowledge without reservation the problem that now confronts the IOC leadership and other sports officials around the world: too many kids are getting too fat.
The corollary: sport may not hold the same appeal for young people as it did in prior generations, particularly with the emergence of video games and other electronic entertainment options.
How the Youth Olympic Games is going to inspire thousands if not millions of young people to turn away from their Game Boys is, however, beyond me.
Here is what Rogge proposed, and the asssembly approved:
The Youth Olympic Games would be a combination sports and education festival. The education component would focus on the so-called “Olympic values,” including friendship, respect and the promotion of sportsmanship. Young people ages 14 to 18 would take part.
The first Summer YOGs would take place in 2010 and include 3,200 athletes, the first Winter YOGs in 2012 for 1,000. The next Summer YOGs would take place in 2014, the Winter in 2016 and so on.
For comparison, the Summer Olympic Games are maxed out at 10,500 athletes; the Winter Games typically feature about 2,500 athletes.
Every one of the roughly 200 national Olympic committees in the world would send at least four participants. Some teens would be invited to take part. Some would have to qualify.
The first YOG host cities are yet to be determined.
A Summer YOG budget, Rogge said, figures to be $30 million, Winter $15 to $20 million.
That’s not going to be enough, I predict.
Rogge was emphatic Thursday that the project is just that – a project, with many of the details still to be filled in.
That’s not good enough. There are far too many open questions.
What about security? Who is going to protect – and pay for the protection of – the American and Israeli kids, just to name two groups typically seen to be particularly at risk at the Olympic Games?
What about the obvious potential legal liabilities? This is way beyond summer camp and we are talking about teen-agers, most of them minors.
What about doping? Is it legally and morally appropriate to be drug-testing 14-year-olds? Gilbert Felli, the Olympic Games’ executive director, indicated the intention is there will be “some form of [doping] contol.”
No new infrastructure for any YOG site is to be built – a lovely idea. Practical? Unclear.
Sports would be limited to those already on the Olympic program. Proposals to “integrate youth-driven disciplines that are not part of the Olympic Games may be accepted,” the IOC said in a news release. Which means it’s possible, but not certain, that skateboarding – just as a for instance – might be part of the YOG program. Might.
And what about the IOC staff? Right now there are about 200 – with responsibility at any given time for four upcoming editions of the Games. Now they’re supposed to take this on, too? Pay raise, anyone? Not likely. How’s morale there at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, the Chateau de Vidy?
As a means of spreading sports festivals around the world, including to developing nations that can’t possibly afford the expense of bidding for or staging the Olympic Games themselves, YOG is a genius idea.
As a point of fealty to Rogge and his legacy, it’s also noteworthy. Rogge is likely to remain IOC president until 2013. It’s surely no accident that the first Summer YOG would be in 2010, the initial Winter YOG in 2012.
But isn’t YOG supposed to be about identifying talented young people, and spreading an inspiring message through them?
Let’s be real. Who are the most likely teens to be invited to take part in a YOG? The top 1 or 2% of the young athletic talent in a particular country, as Dick Pound, the longtime Canadian IOC member, pointed out from the assembly floor – precisely the group that is self-motivated and hardly needs help fighting off cellulite.
As Pound asked, “Will the Youth Olympic Games get one more person who is what we call in America a couch potato into a swimming pool or onto a track?”
If the point is that this 1 or 2% is going to inspire friends and neighbors and the wider population, I ask, how? How is the message to be distributed?
The United States is obviously going to get more than four slots. Let’s say the U.S. gets 100 slots. Even 200 or 300. It’s not important. There are 300 million people in the United States. Even if there are 300 American YOG-gers, that’s one for every 1 million people. How, exactly, is one person supposed to inspire all those others to put down their PS2 Guitar Hero II controllers? How are all those people going to find out about Susie or Billy’s excellent adventure?
There is zero chance this thing draws significant TV ratings; the sad reality is that the primary Olympic sports don’t attract big numbers between the Games.
Meanwhile, newspaper travel budgets are diminishing; the number of American sports reporters covering the Pan American Games later this month in Brazil, where there will be real Olympic athletes competing, can probably be counted on two hands, maybe one.
But technology is a beautiful thing, right? So now all these YOG-gers are going to be blogging or posting video clips of their experiences to YouTube orMySpace or whatever. Again – how does one empirically measure the ripple effect, if indeed there is one?
I predict, by the way, that it’s likely that what’s going to be posted are dorm hijinks – not classroom learning.
The irony Thursday is that the YOG discussion Thursday here at the IOC assembly in Guatemala City was followed immediately by a presentation by Jean-Claude Killy, the 1960s ski champion and longtime IOC member who served as the IOC’s chief link to the 2006 Torino Games – a presentation that underscored diminishing interest among young people in the Olympic Games.
If the Olympic Games themselves aren’t a spark, how precisely are Youth Olympic Games supposed to do the job?
Samaranch made an intriguing observation – that YOG may prompt governments to pay more attention to sports, and to take a new or renewed look at funding sports programs going forward.
If that’s what this is about, at least that’s a compelling – if unproven – rationale.
But it may be, as Pound pointed out from the floor, is that the IOC is in essence a 19th century structure that’s trying to tackle a 21st century problem.
Pound proposed an alternative track. At issue is a global problem, he said. Let’s convene a “more global approach that could be led by the IOC,” perhaps a conference at which, he went on, the IOC would invite experts in education, public health, epidemiology, advertising and so on. Then a bunch of really smart people could “canvass what’s already being done and identify some integrated global solutions.”
Now that is a good idea.
Posted by Alan Abrahamson on July 5, 2007 02:39 PM