Nanjing wins 47-42 to host second Youth Olympic Games

IOC President Jacques Rogge announces the result

VANCOUVER, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- Nanjing of China won the hosting right for the second Summer Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in 2014 here on Wednesday.

Nanjing won the vote by a narrow margin 47-42 over the only other candidate city Poznan of Poland.

The result was announced by International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge at the 122nd IOC session in Vancouver, two days ahead of the opening of the 21st Winter Olympics.

The Chinese bidders hugged each other with big smiles.

Talking about the close competition with Poznan, Zhu Shanlu, director of the Nanjing Bidding Committee said he felt nervous when seeing the narrow result.

"I had thought about another result, because I always knew how hard and fierce it was to compete with Poznan," said Zhu after the session.

Nanjing, the capital city of eastern China's Jiangsu Province and the ninth largest city in China, joined Mexico's Guadalajara and Poland's Poznan in the running, before Guadalajara dropped out in January.

"Our victory came from the power of China, and also from my hometown Nanjing," Zhu added.

"We have a lot of things to do in the future, and we are ready to take the responsibility," he said.

The 2014 Games is scheduled to take place over 12 days with up to 3,500 athletes aged 14-18 competing in as many as possible of the 26 official Olympic summer sports.

In January, Nanjing came out favorite by the IOC Evaluation Commission as its project to host the Games presenting "the minimal risk".

Singapore will host the inaugural Games during August 14-26, 2010, while the first Winter Youth Olympics is scheduled for 2012 in Innsbruck, Austria.

More than 97% of the residents in Nanjing are supporting the city's bid for the 2014 Games, as shown in a survey by the Nanjing Opinion Poll Center in last December.

According to the survey, 93.38% of the Nanjing residents will be willing to work as volunteers for the Games, and the percentage is particularly high (96.52%) among those below age 35.

With a population of approximately 7.4 million, the city's 117 million US dollars budget appeared to be consistent with the levels of service described in the candidature file and most key costs had been taken into consideration, according to the Evaluation Commission's report.

Nanjing, the host of the Chinese National Games in 2005, determined to use its existing venues, as 21 of the required 25 already in existence and in close proximity to the proposed site of the Olympic Village.

The vision of the YOG is to inspire young people around the world to participate in sports and adopt and live by the Olympic values.

Source: Xinhua