Gyor (HUN), 29th August 2014 – at the beginning of this week, the official EYOF 2017 mascot Hugoo welcomed the representatives of the EOC EYOF Commission on visit to the organisers of the 2017 European Youth Olympic Summer Festival in the city of Györ.
Jozef Liba, chair or the EOC coordination commission, and EOC EYOF Manager Katerina Nycova were very satisfied with the outcome of their visit.
Györ, which was elected organiser of the 2017 Summer EYOF in December 2012, is a beautiful city with 130,000 inhabitants that lies in a triangle between three European capital cities: Budapest (138 km), Vienna (109 km) and Bratislava (90 km).
The EYOF is the first Olympic event to be organised in Hungary and the Organising Committee wishes to make it a big sports holiday for the whole country.
The organisers reported on the progress made in the preparations for this EYOF, and showed the EOC delegation two newly built venues: the swimming pool, and the Multisport Audi Arena where the Handball tournament will be held. Both facilities will open this autumn. The Györ 2017 EYOF project seems to be one of the most compact EYOFs ever, with two sports clusters close to each other. The so called Olympic Centre, currently being built, will host the Swimming, Judo, Tennis, Athletics and Gymnastics events. The other cluster includes Handball and training halls. Basketball and Volleyball will take place directly at the Athletes village on the premises of the Szechenyi University Campus. Cycling will take place within the city. At two meetings with the Organising Committee, various organisational topics were discussed on the basis of the OC’s very well prepared Progress Report.
The Organising Committee, led by Olympic Champion Zsolt Borkai, who is the President of the Hungarian NOC and Mayor of Györ, is paying great attention to preparations for the EYOF and runs various EYOF promotional activities within the city and schools in order to raise awareness of the Festival.
One of the tools designed to attract the attention of the general public is the official EYOF 2017 mascot Hugoo. Hugoo is a rooster the origins of which come from a legend related to the city. Hugoo´s message to all European countries is clear: come and visit Györ in 2017 and you will for sure come back again.