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The EYOWF 2011 was introduced to Europe in Istanbul
Wednesday November 26 2008 09:48 AM
On November 21 – 23 the 37th General Assembly of the Association of European Olympic Committees (EOC) was held in Istanbul. It was attended by the top representatives of the Czech Olympic Committee led by its President Milan Jirásek, as well as by the delegation of the EYOWF 2011 Liberec Organising Committee consisting of Martin Ditrich, Kateřina Nyčová, Daniel Merz, and the Project Advisor Roman Kumpošt.
The annual convention, with the traditional participation of Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee, had a full programme – not only because it coincided with celebrations of the hundredth anniversary of the Turkish Olympic Committee.
At first, the EOC President Patrick Hickey presented the Report on the Association’s activities, which was followed by a summary of the activities performed by individual committees. Then the participants to the meeting heard the assessment of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and information about preparations of the future Olympics organisers: Vancouver 2010, London 2012, and Sochi 2014. The delegates were also presented the short-listed candidate cities for the Summer Games in 2016 – Chicago, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid.
In Istanbul, a great degree of attention was paid to the European Youth Olympic Festivals, which the EOC has been organising since 1991.“There are only weeks left before the organisation of the Winter Festival held in Szczyrk in February 2009 starts, and months before the summer one in Tampere – in both cases the organisers focused especially on the updates related to organising these events. In contrast, the roughly ten-minute long presentations of the 2011 EYOWF organisers – Liberec and Trabzon – centred on introducing the festivals concepts, organising cities, sports venues, and the background facilities. We provided the participants with special information bulletins and with detailed written assessment of all areas of preparations," says the Executive Director of the Organisation Committee, Ms. Kateřina Nyčová.
A member of the EOC Coordination Committee, Mr. Volodymyr Gerashchenko from the Ukraine, contributed to the Liberec presentation. “Mr. Gerashchenko visited the location of the EYOWF 2011held in the Liberec region at the beginning of November and therefore his assessment was supported with the latest information and arguments. He spoke highly about the current state of the local preparations and sports venues and confirmed things were going very smoothly. Also Guido de Bondt, President of the EOC Committee for the European Youth Olympic Festivals expressed similar views in his report,” says the EYOWF 2011 Project Advisor, Mr. Roman Kumpošt.
The delegates of the EOC General Assembly also elected the organisers of the 2013 Festivals. The Czech Republic had a candidate prepared – together with Genoa and Utrecht, Brno competed for organising the Summer EYOF. However, the Dutch Utrecht beat the Czech town by one vote in the end! And in winter 2013 the youth athletes will travel to the Romanian town of Brasov.
The performance of representatives of the Organising Committee of the premiere Summer Youth Olympic Games (YOG) – international version of the European Festivals – held in Singapore in 2010 attracted large attention, too.
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