The International Olympic Committee (COI) will select the host city in Lausanne, Switzerland on July 3 2013. There are five other contenders: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Glasgow, Scotland; Medellin, Colombia; Poznan, Poland and Rotterdam, Holland; with the list due to be narrowed down in February 2013.
The Youth Olympics is an 11-day event featuring athletes aged 14 to 18. The first event was held in Singapore in 2010 and the next edition will be in Nanjin, China in 2014. Some 3,800 athletes from 204 countries will take part, competing in 28 sports.
Guadalajara had previously bid for the 2014 Youth Olympics, but pulled out in 2010, opting to focus solely on hosting the 2011 Pan American Games. Nearly 6,000 competitors took part and the games were a great success, meaning Guadalajara will now be among the favorites to win the Youth Olympics bid.“The world saw that there is a lot more to Mexico,” said Gonzalez on Tuesday, reflecting on last year’s event. “The Pan American Games helped our country and so we are confident that we can be successful in the Youth Olympic Games.”
Guadalajara now has a great advantage in that it boasts an impressive list of new sporting venues and has all of the infrastructure necessary for the Youth Olympics. The only exception is in golf, which will be added to the roster of olympic sports at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, but the Guadalajara Country Club is an obvious potential venue.
According to Jalisco Sports Council Director Carlos Andrade Garin, the games will cost between 150 and 200 million pesos, a sum that will be covered by the COI, federal, state and municipal governments, as well as private sponsors.