Coates Glad Youngsters Can Get Skates On

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday February 27, 2006

Jacquelin Magnay in Sestriere

YOUNG figure skaters and speed skaters will have the chance to compete in the Australian Youth Olympic Festival after the inclusion of winter sports on the program for 2007.

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates said the addition to the festival - which is an opportunity for junior athletes to perform on the world stage - was a natural development following the success of the Australian winter Olympic team in Turin.

Australia won two medals, a gold to moguls skier Dale Begg-Smith and a bronze to aerials skier Alisa Camplin, surpassing the pre-Games hype of "a medal of any colour".

There were some outstanding top 10 results: Torah Bright was fifth in the snowboarding; Damon Hayler seventh in the boardercross, Jacqui Cooper eighth in aerials and the short-track speed skating relay team finished sixth after winning the "B" final. Olympic officials are thrilled the momentum of the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, where the team won two golds, was maintained in Italy.

"The sports that have done well here were those sports that got an extra injection of funding through the Olympic Winter Institute and it simply confirmed what we thought," Coates said.

But the team of 40, the biggest in Australian winter Olympic history, didn't live up to lofty expectations in skeleton, cross country skiing and alpine skiing. While there will be a couple of months of retrospection - and a few tough calls as to where the limited funding will now be directed - it is clear that figure skating and short-track speed skating will be new beneficiaries.

The big loser may be alpine skiing, although Coates was calling on bodies such as the NSW Institute of Sport to put more money into that blue-riband discipline and perhaps fund a European alpine base.

"It is clear that the short-track speed skating offers us significant medal opportunities," he said.

Coates said both figure skating and short-track skating would be included in the Olympic Youth Festival. China and Japan have already agreed to send competitors and South Korea and Canada are expected to follow suit.

Coates said that long term the winter youth festival might be held later in the year and incorporate other events at Mount Buller.

He was pleased the Italians had few problems, especially with athlete transport in the mountains.

Turin organising committee chairman Valentino Castellani said at the weekend the Olympic Games had succeeded in dispensing a strong flavour of Italian style, having overcome initial slow ticket sales, budget woes, taxation raids and the drug raids on the Austrian nordic skiers.

Despite transport problems in the mountains for volunteers and media, the buses kept rolling for the athletes.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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