The first ever Youth Olympic Games are being held here in Singapore, and they end tomorrow (26 Aug, 2010). There were 3,530 young athletes representing 204 countries that came to the first ever Olympic Event in Singapore.
This event was created by the International Olympic Committee and it is modeled after the normal Olympics except the participants must be between the ages 14-18. Events include swimming, diving, archery, gymnastics, basketball, fencing, rowing, judo, tennis, wrestling and many others. They will hold a summer Olympics every 4 years, and a winter Olympics every 4 years and stagger them just as the adult Olympics. The 2012 Winter Youth Olympics will be held in Innsbruck, Austria and will include alpine and nordic skiing, skating, luge, snowboarding and many others.
The Unites States sent 80 proud young Americans to this inaugural 2010 Summer Youth Olympics, but virtually no one back in the USA even knew about it. There has been a virtual black-out on U.S. news about the event. CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS are not covering it, and I have not been able to find one link online to any press coverage by any of these American media networks. The only article I found on CNN.com was one that was entitled “Iran bans girls’ football team from Youth Olympics over uniform”. Oh, IRAN… of course! But that’s it? Not a mention about our own team, or those of 203 other countries? These kids deserve a lot more!
USA Youth Olympians
So while American news has decided these young athletes do not deserve any attention, our Embassy staff came out in force to welcome the 2010 Olympic Torch runner, and our Ambassador and Deputy Chief of Mission visited Team USA to show our support.
Torch Runner by the American Embassy Singapore
US Ambassador visits Team USA
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