The 4th edition of Winter Youth Olympics is all set to begin tomorrow, January 19, in the Gangwon Province, South Korea.
A total of 1900 athletes from 76 participating NOCs will take part in the celebrated tournament. Nigeria, Algeria, Tunisia, Puerto Rico, and UAE will be making their debut in the multisport event. The hosts, South Korea has the most number of participants followed by USA and Germany.
Gangwon will feature 7 sports and 15 disciplines in a total of the 81 events. The men and women sports are 34 in each, thus maintaining a gender parity.
Apart from the Opening Ceremony, The rest of the event is free for the people to watch, i.e no tickets.
The event is making use of the stadiums used for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
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The Winter Youth Olympics started in 2012 in Innsbruck, Austria with over 1100 athletes turning up for the event. Germany came out first in the medal tally.
The second and third edition took place in Lillehammer and Lausanne. In 2016, Lillehammer became the first city to host both Olympics and Youth Olympics. The 2024 Gangwon is also the first of its kind to be hosted outside Europe.
In terms of Youth Olympics, Gangwon is the third Asian city to host the tournament, irrespective of summer and winter. Singapore hosted the Summer Youth Olympics in 2010 and Nanjing hosted the same in 2014.
