• 
• 

Published on October 30, 2007

The Ministry of Tourism and Sports recently appointed the Bangkok Metropolitan Admin-istration (BMA) to set up a bid committee for Bangkok to host the 1st Summer Youth Olympic Games, the world's first tournament held for athletes aged between 14 and 18.

Executive members of the committee include Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin as chairman; Charoen Wattanasin, of the National Olympic Committee of Thailand who is the chairman for the rules and laws commission and information and technology commission; Pongsak Semson, permanent secretary of the BMA; and Supaluck Umpujh, vice president of Siam Paragon Devel-opment Co Ltd, who is also the committee's vice-chairman.

The committee submitted its proposal to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on October 26, saying Bangkok was one of the major candidates to host the 1st Games.

Supaluck said that hosting the Games would give Bangkok a legacy similar to that of Athens, which in 1896 became the first city to host the Olympic Games.

Supaluck said Bangkok was competing against other 10 cities: Algiers; Athens; Belgrade; Debrecen, Hungary; Guatemala City; Kuala Lumpur; Moscow; Poznan, Poland; Singapore; and Turin, Italy.

The candidate cities will be reduced to five on November

12 and the winner will be announced in February.

The host city will welcome more than 3,500 young athletes from 205 countries.

"Bangkok has well-prepared facilities to support the event including stadiums and athletes' accommodation at Thammasat University's campus in Rangsit," said Supaluck.

"I believe in the great potential of Bangkok to be selected by the IOC as the host city due to the large population of young people in Thailand. The country currently has about 60 million people and about 15 million are aged between 14 and 18. The number of young people in Thailand is higher than the total population of Singapore," she said.

Supaluck said many Thai youths were challenged by serious problems such as lack of education, drug addiction, violence, Aids, even terrorism. Playing sports could help them turn their lives around.

She said if Bangkok was selected by the IOC as host, the Games could be held between August 8 and 20, 2010. Simultaneous ceremonies could be held to celebrate the Queen's birthday and Mother's Day.

"We are approaching leading business colleagues such as True Corp as well as existing sponsors of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games including Visa, Samsung, McDonald's and Coca-Cola, to help work on and support all communications campaigns to raise awareness of Bangkok as one of the major candidates to host the 1st Summer Youth Olympic Games in 2010," Supaluck said.

She said leading creative people and strategists including Bhanu Ingkawat, creative director of Greyhound Co Ltd, Paranee Jethsomma, executive producer of Sunshine Co Ltd, Vipada Pussayanawin, a strategic consultant, Winai Chairakpong, project director of Bug Studio Co Ltd, Ardkit Suntornwat, director and general manager for multimedia business, True Corp Plc, and Kitikorn Penrote, managing director of True Fantasia, had joined together to create a communications campaign including TV commercials that would be launched soon.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

 The Nation