Solar to air inaugural Youth Olympic Games

MANILA, Philippines -  The Youth Olympic Games is a sporting event for young people, balancing sport, education and culture.

Th YOG works as a catalyst in these fields throughout the Olympic Movement.

To be held in Singapore this August, the YOG aims to give the youngsters an education based on Olympic values: friendship, fair play, non-violence and a rejection of any form of doping.

The Youth Olympic Games aims to bring together talented athletes – aged 14 to 18 – from around the world to participate in high-level competitions, but also, alongside the sports element of the event, to run educational programs on the Olympic values, the benefits of sports for a healthy lifestyle, the social values sports can deliver and the dangers of doping and of training to excess or of inactivity.

With 3,200 athletes and 800 officials as its inaugural participants, the vision of the Youth Olympic Games is to inspire young people around the world to participate in sports and adopt and live by the Olympic values.

All Olympic sports would be represented but with fewer events, and some new, youth-oriented sports might be introduced. The sports program will encompass all 26 sports on the program of the 2012 Summer Games, with a limited number of disciplines and events.

Those included are aquatics, archery, athletics, badminton, basketball, boxing, canoe-kayak, cycling, equestrian, fencing, football, gymnastics, handball, hockey, judo, modern pentathlon, rowing, sailing, shooting, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, volleyball, weightlifting and wrestling

In the coming weeks leading up to this event, the POC will be releasing the list of sports/events where the Philippines will have athletes/delegates.

And always working hard to bringing the best sporting action from around the world, SOLARtv and Solar Sports will be showing the games Aug. 14 to -26.

The delegates:

Weightlifting

Teenage lifter Patricia Llena became the first Filipino athlete, in an individual event, to qualify for the first YOG in Singapore after scooping up three bronze medals in the recent Asian Youth and Junior Weightlifting Championship in Tashkent , Uzbekistan.

Swimming

Jasmine Alkhaidi, a precocious 16-year-old, clocked 59.87 seconds in the girls’ 100-meter freestyle qualifying heat and made it to the semis at the Singapore Sports School Champions Way pool.

The third RP swimmer to earn a slot to the YOG was Banjo Borja, eighth in the boys’ 200-m IM finals at 2:11.60, better than the qualifying time of 2:11.93. Korea‘s Jung Won Yong won the gold in 2:09.92.

Tennis

On January 1, 2009, Francis Alcantara reached his highest junior ranking of World Number 14. He won the 2009 Australian Open boys doubles event with Hsieh Cheng-peng, 6-4, 6-2 in the final. He recently completed his secondary education at Xavier University - Ateneo de Cagayan High School.

Other RP delegates – Jessie Lacuna, Dorothy Hong, Jose Gonzales (swimming), Gelo Alolinno, Michael Pate, Kiefer Ravena and Ray Parks (basketball)