Almost exactly eight years since British Olympic Association Chair Sebastian Coe "delivered the electrifying speech that won the Olympic Games for London, he will aim to bring the fledgling Youth Olympics to Glasgow in 2018 with the argument that it will help finish what he started," according to Owen Gibson of the London GUARDIAN. Coe: "This was always going to be a 20-year journey -- three years to land the thing [London 2012], seven to deliver and 10 years to capture everything we witnessed last year. For me, having a Youth Olympic Games at the midway point of that 10-year journey is fantastic." Coe will be one of a four-strong presentation team that on Thursday "will try to see off competition" from Medellín, Colombia and Buenos Aires for the Youth Olympics, "a pet project" of outgoing IOC President Jacques Rogge. Glasgow's rivals "are likely to argue" that the U.K. has had its share of major sporting events over recent years, and that the development event, which brings together 3,600 athletes aged between 14 and 18 from around the world to compete in a range of sports, "should go to a developing nation." But Coe "will argue that the event is still too fragile and would benefit from being held in a mature market in its third incarnation." Coe said, "I'm committed to globalized sport, but you have to do it in a way where you send entities out there fully fledged and fully formed. Not to do it in a state where the roots are still pretty shallow" (GUARDIAN, 7/3).
