Inaugural Youth Olympic Games get underway at opening ceremony

Story by Kenneth Tan/Red Sports and Koh Yizhe/Red Sports. Photos by Lai Jun Wei and Vanessa Lim/Red Sports

Float@Marina Bay, Saturday, August 14, 2010 – The first ever Youth Olympic Games (YOG) got underway in a stylish opening ceremony at the Float@Marina Bay last night with Singapore’s President S R Nathan officially declaring the Games open.

It was a showcase of arts and exuberance as thousands of youths performed during the ceremony for a 27,000-strong crowd.

Joyce Wong and Seah Xiang Ming were part of seven O School dancers who participated in the 200-strong opening act.

“I’m feeling really great about performing at the first ever YOG!” said Joyce before the act. “We are performing a hip-hop item and I think our greatest challenge will be coordination with everybody.”

“At the start of our training, getting the moves right was hard because they kept changing the steps,” commented Xiang Ming. “We had to learn quickly. But after that, it was alright.”

The seven dancers participated in the opening act and had only one month to prepare for it.

Various schools also sent representatives to the ceremony, with Meridian Junior College having 20 students who participated in the parade of the various National Olympic Committees’ (NOC) flags.

“It was awesome, a lot of friends saw me on TV!” exclaimed 18-year-old Felicia Lin. “I’m honoured to be part of this. 10 years down the road when I look back, I’ll be proud that I was once a part of YOG.”

“I’m very honoured as this is the first YOG,” echoed 17-year-old Louis Low. “It won’t be coming back to Singapore until many years later. It’s a good experience as we got to interact with the various athletes.”

Non-Singaporeans, like Hasan Kazmi who has Australian citizenship but was born here, were also part of the opening ceremony.

“It feels good to be participating,” said 20-year-old Hasan. “We went through four rehearsals in the last two weeks. It is good that different nationalities get to participate in the opening ceremony as well.”

The highlight of the night was arguably the ‘Playing with Fire’ segment which consisted of two parts. One had youths holding props with lighting to create formations in the reflecting pool on the floating platform, while the other required youths to perform on the main stage using various fire props.

Pearlyn Yap was part of that performance and explained her role.

“I am a member of the Singapore Soka Association (SSA), and we have been performing in the National Day Parade (NDP) for more than 20 years,” she said. “This time round, SSA were approached by the YOG Committee to perform during the opening ceremony, and many youths in the SSA auditioned to be part of this act on a voluntary basis.”

“We have been training since March 2010 and it was a challenge from the beginning because it was a very stringent process which required discipline, courage and commitment from every individual. Not everyone who auditioned or trained with us would get to perform.”

“It is an honour and privilege to perform at the opening ceremony for the first ever YOG. During this journey, there were times when I felt like giving up because I thought I was unable to handle the stress of the obstacles that I was facing, but I’m glad I persevered, and am incredibly proud to be part of this act along with the other 300 over youths from SSA.”

“I hope that after watching our performance, youths around the world will face challenges in their lives with positivity and determination, and blaze the trail in their lives.”

Fireworks were a constant during the ceremony with the audience visibly thrilled as many of them clicked away with their cameras.

Madam Jayda Tan was one of the lucky spectators who caught the ceremony live in action.

“When I knew I got the ticket to the opening ceremony, I was looking forward to it,” said the 40-year-old housewife. “The whole ceremony was a real eye-opener. I really enjoyed one of the earlier performances as well as the finale. It was quite good. I also enjoyed the atmosphere of the whole place.”

As a final word of encouragement to Singapore’s athletes, she said, “Go for it!”

The ceremony ended with six Singapore athletes carrying the Youth Olympic flame, most notably 15-year-old Jeffrey Lightfoot who captained the Singapore to a 3-1 win over Zimbabwe the previous night.

Sunday August 15th will see the start of 12 days of exciting action, where 130 Singaporean athletes will feature in all 26 sports.

For more photos, go to the next page.