If the Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are a great success on the competition area, the success is perhaps even more striking outside the venues.
Athletes impress spectators with performance in all sports, but the Olympic spirit is most evident in the streets of the Olympic Capital where the festival Lausanne in Games! gather the local population in the streets to celebrate the YOG.
The festival Lausanne in Games! includes more than 250 workshops, exhibitions and activities in which the public can participate, one of the strong points being the range of sports initiations offered. These initiations allow residents of all ages, but especially children, to imitate the champions they have seen on the slopes or on the ice.
“In the streets … I have never seen anything like this, personally. I am from Lausanne, and I have never seen that in Lausanne. This is indeed the effect that the Olympic Games and the Youth Olympic Games “, declared the executive director of the Olympic Games, Christophe Dubi, during a press conference organized halfway through the YOG.
And it is not only in Lausanne: all the competition sites have welcomed the spirit of the festival. From St. Moritz to Tuffes, this festive atmosphere of Lausanne in Games! is everywhere at the YOG.
Didier Pradon is one of the managers on site at Les Tuffes and talks to us about the sports initiations in biathlon that he supervised; this animation gives participants the opportunity to fire a laser rifle at a target and to ski through a small circuit on which their time is recorded. People of all ages can participate, making YOG biathlon competitions an even more attractive outing idea for a fun family day out.
“It is a good initiative because we can start with young children,” says Didier Pradon. “With biathlon, you can often only start at eight, ten or twelve years old. But now, you can start at three. It is very important, and it is really good that it [l’initiation sportive] is possible for both children and adults. “
One of the aims of the YOG is to inspire young people who may dream of one day participating in the YOG themselves. For example, the Norwegian team that won the gold medal in curling at Lausanne 2020 included two athletes who had been introduced to the sport in their hometown of Lillehammer, four years earlier, during the previous edition of the YOG. ‘winter.
Now, with all the interactive possibilities for young children to get to know the different sports they watch at the YOG, there could be an increasing number of such stories in the future.
A volunteer who worked on initiation to ski jumping could not believe his eyes because this activity was so popular. “We did not expect that there would be so many people, to be honest. If we compare with other initiations offered in the past in Lausanne, normally this type of initiations attracts a hundred children per day, but here it’s five times more. “
Using the YOG as a platform and a means of educating young people has been a key objective for the organizers of Lausanne 2020 and the festival from the start Lausanne in Games! ; partnership with schools in the region has played a central role in this effort.
Sabrina Attias, project manager of Lausanne in Games! and responsible for international relations of the City of Lausanne, explained that the participation of schools in the framework of excursions organized so that students can take advantage of sports initiations and other festival activities was a major priority.
“From the start, we wanted schools to participate,” said Sabrina Attias. “At the end of the festival Lausanne in Games! we will have had the visit of 25,000 schoolchildren simply through the excursions organized by the schools. ”
“We never imagined there would be so many people. Normally [à Lausanne], it has to be nice and everything is perfect, but that’s the magic of the rings [olympiques]”.
The impact of the YOG will also come back to the classroom. This week, Swiss medalists in the first wave of athletes will return to their schools to be greeted as heroes; and the teachers were so enthusiastic about the success of the twin brothers Thomas and Robin Bussard in ski mountaineering that they made it a subject of duty for their students!
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