The U.S. might bid for the 2012 Youth Olympics

The U.S. might bid for the 2012 Youth Olympics after not joining a crowded field of competitors for the inaugural 2010 event.

Alexander “Sandy” Treadwell, chairman of the Lake Placid Regional Winter Sports Committee, has sent a letter to the Colorado Springs-based U.S. Olympic Committee, expressing the New York village’s desire to host the first winter version of the Youth Olympics.

No other cities have publicly stated an interest in hosting the 2012 Youth Olympics, although the bidding guidelines have yet to be released by the International Olympic Committee. The host city will be named in 2009.

USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said his organization hasn’t decided whether it will bid for the 2012 Youth Olympics because it’s focused on comprising Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics.

“I can’t say whether we will or will not at this point,” Seibel said. “It is something we will evaluate. It is a concept that we fully support, and we’ve expressed that to the IOC.”

The Youth Olympics, which will feature athletes ages 14-18, was created in July by IOC president Jacques Rogge in an attempt to get youth active in sports and away from TVs and computers.

About 3,500 athletes are expected for the Summer Games and 1,000 for the Winter Games. Each country will send a minimum of four athletes, who will be chosen at least 18 months before the Games.

The summer version features most of the 26 sports that will be contested at the 2012 London Games — baseball and softball are not part of the program — with several twists to appeal to youngsters.

The basketball competition may be “streetball,” in which games are held outside and sometimes with fewer players. The cycling disciplines are mountain bike and BMX, and road and track cycling were left off the schedule.

The IOC will foot the bill for the Youth Olympics — about $30 million for the Summer Games and $15-20 million for the Winter Games.

In a letter to national Olympic committees, Rogge said the Youth Olympics “can offer an excellent platform to create a true community between the youth of the world and the participants by learning and sharing experiences. ... Our hope is that if young people can learn to respect each other on the field of play, they may transfer this to the other parts of their daily lives.”

Ten cities were confirmed this month by the IOC as candidates for the 2010 Youth Olympics: Algiers, Algeria; Athens, Greece; Bangkok, Thailand; Debrecen, Hungary; Guatemala City; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Moscow; Poznan, Poland; Singapore and Turin, Italy.

Candidate cities have until Oct. 26 to complete a 127-page IOC questionnaire. The IOC will select an unspecified number of finalists in November and determine the host city in February.

Athens, Moscow and Turin are the early favorites because they’ve hosted the Olympics — Turin in 2006, Athens in 2004 and 1896 and Moscow in 1980. Algiers and Guatemala City are strong contenders because the Olympics never have been held in Africa or Central America.
Looking ahead to 2012, Lake Placid could be challenged by Salt Lake City and Calgary. Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Olympics, and Calgary was host of the 1988 Winter Games.

The venues used at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid have been maintained by the city’s Olympic Regional Development Authority. They include the hockey rink from the “Miracle on Ice” game, in which the U.S. upset the Soviet Union en route to the gold medal.

“It comes down to venues. If you have the venues, you can do it,” said James McKenna, president of the Lake Placid-Essex County Visitors Bureau. “You’re pretty hard-pressed to find any place in the world that has all of the current sports facilities in an eight-mile radius within a town that is a destination resort.”

The IOC mandates that leaders from candidate cities be “cost-conscious” in their bids and that no new venues be built for the Youth Olympics.

Also, all competitions must be held in the host city, meaning it’s not possible for Colorado Springs to join forces with Denver in a joint bid for 2012.

The IOC’s large seating requirements is the biggest roadblock for a future Colorado Springs bid.

According to bid procedures, the track and field stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies must hold 10,000 people, and a city must have a 2,500-seat aquatics facility.

“It would be very easy to add temporary seating to the Air Force track,” said Mike Moran, director of communications for the Colorado Springs Sports Corporation. “What do you do with the aquatics venue? I don’t think there is anything in the area that would seat that many people.”

Asked about Colorado Springs’ chances of hosting the Youth Olympics, Moran said, “The list of (financial) guarantees is daunting. And we’re not typically a city that has been willing to lay out large guarantees.”