The Winter Youth Olympic Games Innsbruck 2012

Taking place in January 2012, the first Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) comprised 63 events and brought together 1,022 athletes from 69 countries.

A direct link between all three events was provided by a group of around 30 volunteers who had also been on duty in 1964 and 1976. Some were as old as 83, and their enthusiasm was a visible sign of Innsbruck’s reawakened Olympic spirit. In total, 1,400 volunteers from 50 countries helped out at Innsbruck 2012. In the years since then, the city has built up an extensive and permanent volunteer network that has delivered over 200,000 working hours to date. In the process, Innsbruck has also created a pool of talented young professionals with first-hand experience in the organisation of events such as the inaugural Winter YOG. Their Olympic background and event management expertise should help their employment prospects.

Reflecting the post-Games usage of the Olympic Village, the Innsbruck 2012 Youth Olympic Village has since provided more than 400 affordable homes to families on low incomes. Built using passive-house technology (which makes use of special ventilation systems and ultra-effective insulation), the Village was situated on military land that was due for sale but which the Austrian government awarded instead to the Tirolean regional government.

While Innsbruck 2012 relied upon nearly all the city’s existing and extensively used Olympic facilities, staging the Alpine skiing events at Patscherkofel and cross-country skiing at Seefeld, it also created new competition and training facilities to complement them. The construction of a Nordic sports centre and jumping hill at Seefeld and a new freestyle park in Kuhtai have benefitted local grassroots sport, providing quality training facilities for young athletes. These developments, with a long-term vision in mind, have enabled the region to host other major events. They include the 2020 Winter World Masters Games – attended by more than 3,000 athletes – and the 2016 International Children’s Winter Games, with Seefeld staging events at both competitions. For its part, Kuhtai has held women’s slalom and giant slalom World Cup races.

As well as using the infrastructure developed for Innsbruck 2012, these multi-sport youth events drew on the expertise of the staff who worked in the Winter YOG Organising Committee. Many of the 600 volunteers who helped out at the 2016 International Children’s Winter Games were also Innsbruck 2012 “veterans”. The exposure provided by Innsbruck 2012 and the events that followed it boosted tourism as well. For example, in January 2016 – the month in which the International Children’s Winter Games took place – Innsbruck recorded 114,953 overnight stays, compared to 90,837 in the same month in 2004.