CYG FACTS

• Every Youth Games comprises 8 to 10 sports. Athletics and Swimming are compulsory, and no more than 2 can be team sports.

• Each nation or territory is guaranteed a minimum of four places (two young men, two young women), with all other places allocated on a pro-rata basis according to their athlete numbers at the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

• The Youth Games take place every four years. However, a decision to revise the quadrennial cycle with the global sporting calendar prompted the 2017 Games. Future Games therefore take place in 2021, 2025 and so on.

• The first Youth Olympic Games, in Singapore in 2010, took place ten years after the inaugural Youth Games in Edinburgh in 2000.

• The Games has produced some of the world’s elite athletes including Kirani James (Athletics), Beth Tweddle (Gymnastics), Chad le Clos (Aquatics) and Caster Semenya (Athletics).

• A key vision for the Youth Games is to enable smaller nations and cities, unable to host a Commonwealth Games, to enjoy the socio-cultural, tourism and other legacy benefits of hosting a major international sporting event. Samoa, for example, is a Small Island Developing State with a population of less than 200,000 people, 53% of whom are 25 and under.

• Another key vision is for existing venues to be used, reducing infrastructural costs. Samoa 2015 will use two sport complexes built primarily for the 2007 Pacific Games.

• Off the field of play, the Youth Games experience focuses on friendship, integrity and cross-Commonwealth inter-cultural exchange – learning and living the CGF values of Humanity, Equality, Destiny.

What NOT to say

• “It’s a mini-Commonwealth Games”: This is an elite sporting event for young athletes, based on the Commonwealth Games model.

• “Boys and girls”: This isn’t an everyday junior sporting event; these are young Commonwealth athletes representing their country.