Tan Sixin at the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games
In the days of August 14-26, 2010 Singapore held her biggest international sporting event and what sporting event could be bigger than the Olympics? Okay, it is actually not THE Olympics, but this is the junior version, the Youth Olympic Games. Similar to the Paralympics, the Youth Olympic Games are targetted at a particular group of athletes, in this case as the name implies, these games are targetted at the youth of the age group 14-18. It has been my dream to be able to see an Olympics, and while this is not THE summer Olympics, this is the closest one I could probably ever get to.
Queue Outside the Youth Olympic Venue
I decided to watch some of the games quite late and by the time I decided to buy, the tickets were sold out everywhere. I wanted to watch the basketball games, it was actually a 3 on 3 competition, but they were all sold out. Apparently, this also became news in Singapore with thousands wanting to watch the games live but unable to because of the lack of tickets, but with the venues, embarassingly, half-empty. This prompted the government to look into the matter. The issue is that the tickets have already been sold, so the place is actually sold out. It is just that a matter of whether the ticket holders want to show up or not.
Gymnastic Competition Venue at Bishan Sports Hall
The government has stepped into the matter and ordered the organizers to look into the issue. This resulted on tickets being made available at the venue itself an hour before the competitions. With this in mind I decided to take the risk and go to the venue. I chose to watch the gymnastics competitions, which in my opinion were the truly world class competition is. My thinking is that these gymnasts will actually be in the summer Olympics if they weren’t so young.
Ana Sofia Gomez Porras on the Balance Beam
Just my luck the competition was the finals of the men and women. There was another finals the previous day but I didn’t have time to go. The finals are being held at the Bishan Sports Hall near Bishan MRT. It was my first time to go there and I didn’t know how to get there. I actually missed my stop at got off at Ang Mo Kio MRT because of a misleading sign which depicted the Bishan Sports Hall as being beside the Ang Mo Kio MRT. The sports hall was a short walk away from the MRT station and I knew it was the right place when I saw that there was a queue at the still closed ticket booth.
Gymnastics Competition at the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games
Apparently, everyone else had the same idea, these people were also queueing up for the chance to get some on the spot tickets. The queue wasn’t very long at around 15 people before me. The first guy apparently was there at 12 noon, the games don’t start until 6 in the evening. There were very helpful usherers who showed us the way to the queue. Another queue was for athletics but the queue was empty, apparently I made a good choice. One of the usherers explained to us that tickets will only be available after the games start, since they still need to evaluate the venue in terms of safety. Upon instructions from a minister of parliament who visited, 150 tickets were released much to my relief. Anyone after that will have to wait for the games to start. I was delighted to get my tickets and waited for my turn to go in the Olympic venue.
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