ITU President and IOC Member Marisol Casado visited the Olympic capital in Lausanne, Switzerland last Wednesday to attend the International Federation (IF) Debriefing of the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games.  Casado was joined by ITU Sport Director Gergely Markus in the debrief which was hosted by the IOC and the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF).

Led by Sergey Bubka, Chair of the Singapore 2010 Coordination Commission, the session discussed IFs’ experience at the inaugural YOG to build future requirements and guidelines, providing important input for the next edition of the YOG.  Casado is a member of the IOC Coordination Commission for the 2014 Nanjing Youth Olympic Games, which is to be hosted from 16th through 28th of August, 2014.  Her role is now extended to be an ASOIF Representative, announced by ASOIF Director Andrew Ryan during the conference.

Also on the panel were Gilbert Felli, IOC Olympic Games Director; Christophe Dubi, IOC Sports Director; Andrew Ryan, ASOIF Director; Goh Kee Nguan, CEO of the Singapore 2010 and Patrick Lee, Sport Director of the Singapore 2010.

ITU formally submitted feedback and recommendations to a series of questionnaires which IOC requested to all international Olympic sport federations in September. “The feedback on the whole YOG concept from the Interational Federations was generally very positive, so was the level of organisation,” said ITU Sport Director Gergely Markus.  Discussions on the several key areas went into details.

In Singapore, individual competitions in both men’s and women’s triathlons were raced in sprint distance (750m swim, 20k bike and 5k run).  Also, Team Triathlon, a 4 x mixed, super-sprint relay, was introduced for its first time in a global multi-sport Games.  It was a significant step forward as ITU is passionate about having the team event added to the Olympic programme.