Montafon, 26th March the EYOF Coordination Commission has paid a second visit to the venues in Austria and Lichtenstein that will, in just less than two year’s time, host the 12th Winter EYOF.
Only a short two weeks after having been assigned the EYOF Flag by Brasov, the organisers of the Vorarlberg/Liechtenstein 2015 Winter EYOF were visited by the EYOF Coordination Commission from the 12th to the 15th of March, when Giuseppe Gianfreda (ITA) and Marlyse Pauly (LUX), accompanied by EYOF manager Katerina Nycova, visited the heart of the 2015 Winter EYOF at Schruns and Tschagguns and all the sports venues where the next Winter Festival will take place.
The previous COCOM visit took place in summer and that was why the members decided to make a second visit in winter, in order to get the right feeling and see the region and especially the sports venues with the winter season in full swing.
They report that the Organising Committee has done a lot of work since the last visit. For the Austrian part of the project, the COCOM were shown the complete plans for the reconstruction of the Ice Hockey arena in Schruns and the plans for the biathlon stadium and shooting range in Gaschurn-Partenen. The OC also presented the homologated courses for the Nordic Combined events in Partenen and construction work for the completely new Ski Jumping venue in Tschagguns, the slopes for Alpine Skiing Mixed team parallel slalom event at St. Gallenkirch and Snowboarding in Schruns at Hochjoch now being ready to host events. On the Liechtenstein side, the Alpine Skiing venue at Malbun is also ready to host slalom and giant slalom events, and the Cross Country courses in Steg have been drawn and are to be homologated soon. The Figure Skating competition will be held in a very nice arena in Dornbirn.
The OC has also prepared the first draft of the sports programme, which will include the snowboarding slopestyle event that has become more and more popular among snowboarders.
The Opening Ceremony will be held in the new Ski Jumping Stadium in Tschagguns, whilst the Victory Ceremonies and the Closing Ceremony will take place at the Kirchplatz in Schruns.
The COCOM was very satisfied with how preparations are proceeding. There is great cooperation with the OC, and both the NOCs of Austria and Liechtenstein are very active and helping with the preparations for the 2015 Winter EYOF.
The mission statement for the 2015 EYOF is that the host regions of Vorarlberg & Liechtenstein are friendly and potential hosts to the world, and that they have a high level of organisational skills and great passion for youth sport. And this is what the COCOM could really see during its visit to the region “Where winter is at home”.