Hockey Schedule of YOG announced by FIH and YOG committee
The General body of the field hockey, The International Hockey Federation (FIH) and the organizing committee of the YOG (Youth Olympic Games) to be held in Singapore, have finalized and released the match schedules of the hockey Championship to be played in the games.
The Youth Olympic Games are to be played from Singapore for 12 days in August, 2010. These games will include the players and athletes from the age of 14 to 18 years old. The Idea of Youth Olympics Games came from the President of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) President Jacques Rogge in 2001. Only 6 years later in July, 2007 IOC members at Guatemala during 119th IOC session approved the idea and it was decided that Youth Games will be staged in near future.
It was later decided that Summer YOG will be held in August 2010 that will last for 12 days. Winter YOG will be held in early 2012, and will be held for maximum 9 days. The IOC has made restrictions on number of players and officials and said that only 3500 athletes and 875 officials can participate in the summer games, whereas 970 athletes and 580 officials can participate in winter edition to be held in early 2012.
The Youth games will not be the first of its type, prior to this, there are examples of European Youth Olympic Festival held every other year with summer and winter versions, and the Australian Youth Olympic Festival. These Youth games can be called as Successor to the discontinued World Youth Games.
For first Version of Youth Games, IOC has selected five candidates that are Athens, Bangkok, Singapore, Moscow, and Turin in November, 2007. In 2008, IOC has shortlisted two cities Moscow and Singapore, among these two one was to host the inaugural YOG. Later in 2008, IOC has honoured Singapore to host the first Summer YOG. The Singapore won the hosting rights by 53 votes to 44 for Moscow.
In the inaugural YOG 6 boy’s and 6 girls’ teams will participate in the hockey tournament. The Hockey competition will be held from 16th to 25th August, 2010. The boy’s tournament will have teams from Australia, Pakistan, Ghana, Chile, Belgium and hosts Singapore. The girl’s tournament will include Argentina, Ireland, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand and South Africa’s youth teams. The first match of Girl’s youth tournament will be between Netherlands and Ireland on Monday, 16th august, 2010 and the final match of the girl’s version will held on Tuesday 24th August. First Boy’s match will be between Pakistan and Ghana’s youth teams on Tuesday, 17th August, 2010 and the final will be played on Wednesday, 25th August 2010. All the matches of the tournament will be played in Sengkang Stadium.
The Singapore Hockey Federation is using this stadium to train their national hockey side. First hockey tournament in Singapore was played in 1993, as part of South East Asian Games and after this Singapore hockey league flourished. Singapore has also hosted the first Women’s Asian Hockey Federation Cup in 1997, where women hockey teams of Asian countries participated. Singapore has also hosted Under-16 Asian Hockey Federation Cup in 2000. The Singapore International Hockey Challenge 2007 was also played here, where International teams of Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Japan and Singapore participated.
The Winter Youth Olympic Games will hold at Innsbruck in Austria from early 2012. There were four candidates for the hosting of Olympic Games; the four cities are Harbin in China, Innsbruck in Austria, Kuopio in Finland and Lillehammer in Norway. The two shortlisted candidates were city of Innsbruck and Kuopio and later Innsbruck was awarded the rights of first ever Winter Youth Olympic Games.
IOC has also decided about the host city of 2014 Summer Olympic Games, Nanjing a Chinese city is selected over Poznan of Poland to host second Youth Olympic Games.
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