Story courtesy of blogger Singapore Sports Fan
Swimmers from the United States of America will not be present at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games (YOG), according to a website run by the Washington Post.
USA Swimming has decided to sit out the inaugural Youth Olympics because of caps in delegation size.
"The Youth Olympics … is really set up more as a world-youth peace and educational program than it is as a high-level competition," Wielgus said.
"We went to the USOC and said we would volunteer not to go … We've invested heavily in our youth team. We have a four-year plan for our youth team program, and this meet is not part of that plan," USA Swimming Executive Director Chuck Wielgus is quoted as saying.
Wielgus said it was not meant as a snub because the YOG only allows four boys and four girls for the swimming competition and so the American swimmers will compete in other competitions during the same period. The YOG is slated for August 2010 in Singapore.
American cyclists and shooters have also decided not to come to Singapore.
The United States Olympic Committee is limited to 100 competitors (70 individual athletes plus two teams) for the YOG.
I wonder how many other countries will try a similar strategy or simply send third-stringers. No athlete in a serious development programme will want to use time for an event that doesn’t meet true IF competitive standards–will they? Think about the typical training schedule: train, overload, recovery, train, overload, recovery–all to peak at specific competitions. But does YOG meet the regular IF formats? As of last week, the websites for Japan, Korea, France, Germany, UK or China did not even have links to the YOG website. Only Canada had a link on the home page. How are people overseas supposed to get enthusiastic about the Games when they aren’t being promoted anywhere but Singapore or on the IOC site? This week I notice that the Olympics.org has English-language pages for many countries, which now have links on YOG. but the home sites in the home languages do not.
Actually I agree with them. If it is called YOG, it should have similar rules / managment as the actual Olympics Games. The Olympics clearly does not limit the number of competitors from a country, so why should YOG?
I can imagine that Singapore has a capacity to manage if terms of venues and time. If that is the case, why give it to us in the first place??
US THING THEY DAMN BIG OR WHAT? Actionnnn