Youth Olympic Games Story
The Youth Olympic Games
What are the Youth Olympic Games?
The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are an elite sporting event for young people from all over the world. But unlike other youth sport competitions, the YOG also includes a series of educational activities with three areas of focus: protecting the athletes, working on performance, and assisting athletes outside of sport.
The sports programme at the YOG is primarily based on that of the Olympic Games, though it includes exciting new sports, disciplines and formats, such as futsal and kiteboarding. In fact, the YOG serves as an event where the innovations of the Olympic Movement can be put to the test, and many sports on the Olympic programme were first trialled at the YOG (including 3-x-3 basketball, monobob, and mixed-gender events, such as swimming's mixed 4 × 100m medley relay).
Away from the field of play, the education programme uses a variety of fun and interactive activities, workshops and team-building exercises to give the participating athletes the opportunity to learn about the Olympic values, explore other cultures, develop the skills to become true ambassadors of their sport, and improve their training methods and performance.
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Who are the Youth Olympic Games for?
The Youth Olympic Games are aimed at bringing talented young athletes (aged between 15 and 18) from around the world together.
The most recent Summer YOG in Buenos Aires in 2018 featured 4,000 athletes and achieved gender equality for the first time. The latest Winter YOG took place in Lausanne in 2020 and featured 1,872 athletes.
Non-athlete participants, namely the Young Reporters, YOG Ambassadors and Athlete Role Models, are also an integral part of the YOG experience.
When are the Youth Olympic Games?
Like the Olympic Games, the YOG are held every four years. The first summer edition was held in Singapore from 14 to 26 August 2010, and the first winter edition was held in Innsbruck, Austria, from 13 to 22 January 2012.
The next editions took place in Nanjing, China (in 2014), Lillehammer, Norway (in 2016), Buenos Aires, Argentina (in 2018) and Lausanne, Switzerland (in 2020). In 2024, the Winter YOG will be held in Gangwon, South Korea followed by Dakar, Senegal in 2026.