February 11, 2010: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) held its 122nd session in Vancouver, Canada, on February 10, 2010. IOC president Jacques Rogge announced during the session on Wednesday that Nanjing (China) was the lucky winner of the right to host the second Summer Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in 2014.

Nanjing won the vote by a narrow 47-42 margin 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.

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 been mentally prepared for quite a different result, because I knew all along 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.

"We have a lot of things to do in the coming preparation period, and we are ready to take on the responsibility," Zhu said in the subsequent press conference.

"Our city is already renowned for its long history and higher-level education. We hope the YOG can boost the development of physical education in China."

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.

"We have no need to build new venues for the YOG, because we already have the excellent stadiums which we built for the (Chinese) National Games five years ago and which are fully capable of hosting the YOG. We don't have to waste money," Zhu said.

Nanjing is understandably determined to use its existing venues, as 21 of the required 25 are already in existence and in close proximity to the proposed site of the Olympic Village.

"Whilst there may be a risk of over-sizing compared with the minimum requirements and YOG philosophy set out by the IOC in terms of venues and service levels, we have agreed to work closely with the IOC on this matter, and a number of proposals have already been made in this regard," said Zhu.

"The IOC expect high quality of the YOG. Of course the scale of the Youth Olympics is not the same as that of the Olympic Games, so we don't need huge stadiums. Smaller venues create a better atmosphere for young people," said IOC member Gilber Feili.

Speaking about comparisons between the YOG and the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, Zhu explained that the audience and the functions were not quite the same.

"We want the emphasis to be on education, sports and cultural exchange," he said.

"The Olympic Village will be repurposed as rental accommodation for university graduates. We also have a sustainable after-use plan for the sporting facilities of the YOG," he added.

"We can offer rich cultural content as part of the YOG, and we are very experienced."

"We are fully supported by our central government, provincial government and the Chinese Olympic Committee."

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 last December.

According to the survey, 93.38% of 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 budget of 117 million US dollars appeared to be consistent with the required levels of service.

“We didn’t think too much about attracting sponsors before winning the hosting rights. But to my surprise, several companies in Canada already showed interest when I met them in Vancouver,” Zhu said. “I don't think it will be difficult for us to find sponsors.”

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