Istanbul, 10th March 2014 – Having so successfully organised the 2011 Summer EYOF in Trabzon, the NOC of Turkey has submitted an application to organise the 2019Winter EYOF. The Candidate City, Erzurum, is located in the eastern part of Turkey and its population is close to 400,000 inhabitants.
It was thus that the members of the 2019 EYOF Evaluation Commission visited Erzurum from 3rd to 6th March 2014, when Jozef Liba, Guro Lium and Katerina Nycova visited all proposed sports venues, the Olympic village, Opening and Closing Ceremony stadium, and held two meetings with the representatives of the Turkish NOC, the Ministry of Youth and Sport, and the Municipality of Erzurum. They also met the Governor of Erzurum.
The City of Erzurum, situated over 1900 meters above sea level, has wonderful conditions for winter sports and is considered the biggest winter sport resort in Turkey. The city is surrounded by the beautiful Palandöken Mountain range. The summit of Mt. Palandöken, which is called Büyük Ejder (Great Dragon), rises to 3,188 meters. In 1957 Atatürk University was established in Erzurum. It is one of the largest universities in Turkey, with more than forty-thousand students.
Erzurum hosted the Winter Universiade in 2011, and so many new sports facilities were built, the existing University dormitories were refurbished and several new blocks were built from scratch. Plus there are enough very good quality hotels in the city.
And Erzurum is not new to hosting winter sports events, including the FIS Junior Nordic World Ski Championships in 2012 and FIS Snowboard Junior World Ski Championships in 2013, as well as other important sports events. All these features make Erzurum a strong contender for the hosting of major winter sport events.
The Biding Committee will have to present its Final Bid book by the end of August 2014, and the election of the 2019 EYOF Host Cities will take place at the EOC General Assembly in November 2014 in Baku.
