USOC weighing Youth Olympics bid

The U.S. Olympic Committee is considering a bid for the Youth Olympics, with Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Lake Placid, N.Y., possible contenders for the event that drew 3,500 athletes from 205 countries to Singapore last month at a cost of $287 million.

Lake Placid would be up for the 2016 or 2020 winter edition, and Raleigh-Durham would be aiming for the 2018 summer edition. The inaugural Youth Winter Games are in 2012 in Innsbruck, Austria, and the next Youth Summer Games are in 2014 in Nanjing, China.

The only candidate city for 2016 is Lillehammer, Norway, which hosted the 1994 Winter Games, and Spain wants a joint bid by Zaragoza and Jaca. Cities with interest in 2020 are Lucerne, Switzerland, and Sofia, Bulgaria. Lake Placid hosted the Winter Games in 1932 and 1980. The IOC will pick the 2016 host in May, with the 2020 election likely in 2015.

There aren’t any official candidates for 2018, but bids have been contemplated by Abuja, Nigeria; Medellin, Colombia; and Monterrey, Mexico, and Toulouse, France, indicated it will bid if Annecy doesn’t win a 2018 Olympic campaign next summer. Raleigh-Durham hosted the 1987 U.S. Olympic Festival. The IOC should name the 2018 host in 2014.

“We haven’t made a decision one way or the other,” USOC chief executive officer Scott Blackmun said about the chance of a bid. “We remain very open-minded about it.”

A North Carolina sports event planner was the USOC nominee in the IOC-led observer program in Singapore, where the Americans took sixth with 21 medals and tied for 12th with four golds, hampered by a lack of top-level swimmers who skipped the event for the Pan-Pacific Championships in Irvine, Calif. China led with 51 medals and 30 golds.

All 26 sports that are part of the Summer Olympics were contested in Singapore – some with a twist, such as 3-on-3 half-court basketball; mixed-gender relays in swimming and triathlon; and head-to-head sprints in canoe and kayak. Roughly 1,050 athletes from 70 countries are expected in Innsbruck, where the 15 Winter Olympic disciplines are on tap.

IOC president Jacques Rogge told reporters in Singapore he thinks the Youth Olympics “will become as much an indispensable fixture of the Olympic calendar as its grown-up brothers.” He’s also a fan of the cultural and educational programs at the Youth Olympics that teach athletes ages 14-18 to play fair and reject corruption, doping and racism.

“I like the concept a lot,” Blackmun said. “We want to bring youth together to learn more about Olympism and to exchange things other than just an athletic competition.”

Cost is the biggest factor in determining if the USOC offers a bid. The IOC estimated the Youth Olympics would cost $30 million to host before Singapore’s budget of $76 million almost quadrupled. By comparison, British Columbia taxpayers spent $877 million on the 2010 Vancouver Games, and the budget for the 2012 London Games is $14.3 billion.

Blackmun said the USOC could stage the Youth Olympics for “a fraction of what it costs to produce the Olympic Games.” He added that while Singapore “produced these Games in a world-class fashion … there’s an opportunity to produce the Games on a much lower scale, and that’s the concept that we like and I think that the IOC likes as well.”

For more Olympic coverage, visit www.gazette.com/olympics. Check out our Olympics blog at http://gazetteolympics.freedomblogging.com.