International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach delivers a speech during the closing ceremony of the Lausanne 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne, Switzerland, Jan. 22, 2020. (Xinhua/Zhang Chenlin)
By sportswriters Su Bin, Yang Fan
LAUSANNE, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach hailed the 3rd Winter Youth Olympic Games that concluded here on Wednesday as a "fantastic" event.
For the IOC, the Games, held in the "Olympic Capital", served as an excellent manifestation of the Olympic Agenda 2020 and the organization's "New Norm".
NEW HISTORY MADE
The base of the IOC and dozens of other international sports organizations, Lausanne welcomed an Olympic event for the first time in its history.
"Welcome home," Bach said to participants in a message at the opening ceremony.
Lausanne 2020 saw a record 79 IOC member associations taking part in 16 disciplines and 81 events across eight sports.
Great importance was attached to gender parity throughout the Lausanne Games. For the first time in a Winter Olympic competition, there was an equal number of male and female athletes.
Ski mountaineering made its debut at the Lausanne Games, while five new events were added to the competition program.
Bach regarded the Youth Olympic Games as a laboratory for new sports and disciplines.
This year's competition was the first time the Winter Youth Olympics had been held across two countries, with neighboring France hosting the competition's biathlon, Nordic combined and ski jumping events.
Enthusiasm for the tournament permeated throughout the local area, with Lausanne 2020 President Virginie Faivre revealing that over 640,000 spectators attended the Games, taking advantage of free access to all competitions.
Two years before the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, Lausanne 2020 offered a platform for all delegations to set up talent pools at a junior level and discover room for future improvement ahead of the quadrennial winter sports extravaganza.
FOR, BY AND WITH YOUTH
Organizers told Xinhua that the notion of "for youth, by youth and with youth" was embodied before and during the Lausanne Games, with young people from local areas involved in every step from an early stage.
"As for the mascot, visual identity, song and podium, we involved all institutions and youths from the region to create it together with the organizing committee. It's already a big step where we've succeeded," Faivre told Xinhua.
Faivre added that in the months leading up to the Games, members from the athlete council of the organizing committee visited schools in order to promote the competition among local children, who were also given tickets to the Games.
In every venue, junior athletes from all countries and regions were treated as stars by those younger than them, with Chinese biathlete Shi Yuanyuan being asked for autographs by the local French children.
Bach expressed huge gratitude to people of Lausanne, the Canton of Vaud and Switzerland for having created a fantastic Olympic atmosphere around the young athletes.
"This result was only possible through very close collaboration between the organizing committee and the IOC, together with all authorities at a local level, the level of Canton and the federal level," he noted.
OLYMPIC AGENDA 2020 EXEMPLIFIED
A total of 1,872 athletes set a record for the Winter Youth Olympics in terms of participation.
This was largely thanks to a "two-wave" system, meaning that during the 14-day competition, the first group of athletes participated in the opening ceremony while the second group attended the closing ceremony.
The system allowed more athletes to participate with no significant increase in cost for the host.
Aiming to achieve sustainability and ensure the legacy of the Games, Lausanne 2020 organizers created a couple of "firsts" in Olympic history.
For the first time, a speed skating race at a Winter Olympic event took place on a natural ice rink in St. Moritz, with the facility built on the frozen lake.
The Lausanne Games also marked the first occasion that eco-friendly fuel was used to power the Olympic cauldron.
In another first, 80 percent of athletes and delegation members used the city's public transportation system.
"The IOC expected from Lausanne what Buenos Aires achieved for the 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games, leading them following the Olympic Agenda into a new era," Bach enthused before the Games commenced.
"I can congratulate Lausanne. It's mission accomplished."
"We are delighted that the organizing committee fully adopted the reforms of the IOC and the Olympic Agenda 2020," the IOC chief added.
