Sir Clive Woodward excited about Innsbruck 2012 after Chef de Missions seminar
By Duncan Mackay
By Tom Degun
September 5 - The Chefs de Mission Seminar for the Innsbruck 2012 Winter Youth Olympic Games has reached a conclusion having hosted more than 200 National Olympic Committee (NOC) delegates from 63 nations.
The three-day briefing also saw the Organising Committee stage the Young Ambassador Seminar with the Innsbruck 2012 Games set to take place from January 12 until 22.
During the Chefs de Mission Seminar a briefing was given to delegates by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Director Gilbert Felli (pictured) and activities included venue tours, media workshops and teambuilding exercises.
Among those who attended the event was Sir Clive Woodward, who is due to be Britain's Chef de Mission in Innsbruck.
"The YOG in Innsbruck will be fantastic experience for everyone involved and we are very much looking forward to the event," Sir Clive told insidethegames.
"The competition will act as an important stepping stone in the development of our best young winter athletes both on and off the field of play.
"Team GB were hugely successful at the first YOG in Singapore last summer and I'm fully confident that the IOC will again provide an environment of the highest quality to allow the young athletes to gain vital experience of the unique Olympic environment.
"Our aim for the YOG in Innsbruck is to find and develop Team GB Olympians of the future and give them the best opportunity to follow in the footsteps of our top winter sport athletes such as Amy Williams [who won gold in the women's bob skeleton at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics]."
Sir Clive was appointed at Team GB Chef de Mission for Innsbruck 2012 in June this year while he was the Team GB Deputy Chef de Mission at both the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics and Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.
He is again set to serve as Deputy Chef de Mission for Team GB at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Sir Clive - who is also a member of the IOC Entourage Commission - will be supported in Innsbruck by the BOA Head of Winter Sport Engagement Mike Hay who has been named as Deputy Chef de Mission for Team GB in Austria.
Innsbruck 2012 will see over 1,000 of the best elite young athletes aged between 14 and 18-years-old compete with the competition set to feature all seven sports on the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games programme.
Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]
June 2011: Sir Clive Woodward pledges immediate future to British Olympic Association after new appointment
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Duncan Mackay is the founding editor of insidethegames.biz, the world's leading and most influential independent Olympic news website. He was voted the British Sports Writer of the Year in 2004, British News Story of the Year in 2004 and British Sports Internet Reporter of the Year in 2009. Mackay is one of Britain's best-connected journalists and during the 16 years he worked at The Guardian and The Observer he regularly broke several major exclusive stories. He was also the only newspaper journalist in Britain to correctly predict that London would win its bid for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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