Delivering the International Olympic Committee’s mandate on Youth Olympic Games in South Africa

Abstract

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is currently planning the historic Youth Olympic Games (YOG), an international mul ti-sport event that will be inaugurated in Singapore in 2010. On the 6t h of July 2007, the establishment of the YOG was approved and will feature 14 to 18 year-old athletes. The purpose of the YOG is to complement the Olympic Games but not to create a “mini-Games”. This event will place emphasis on quality of performance, rather than the sport ing achievement itself and the IOC aims to use the YOG to address the decline in the relevance of sport amongst the younger generation and to educate the youth through the values that sport teaches. The selected sport events will be carefully chosen to protect the health of the young athletes. This study evaluated the perceived strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that South Africa faces in delivering the mandate of the IOC on the YOG. The study had a critical theoretical framework. A semi-structured questionnaire was completed by 36 academic sport experts and administrators of the nine provincial sport academies. The semi-st ructured questionnaire allowed the respondents an opportunity to comment on other relevant issue(s) not raised in the questionnaire. Thematic content analysis was carried out on the semi-structured questionnaires. The data gained was util ised to briefly crit ique South African society and sports in the context of the YOG. The findings i lluminate some percept ion on South Africa’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in relation to the IOC’s vision and mandate and how a team for the Singapore 2010 YOG and beyond may be galvanised.