The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is to promote fan participation in Olympic sports at festivals held in parallel with 2018 Winter Games, the global body said on Friday.
“For the Pyeongchang Games, we have been putting together a pilot project… to celebrate the Games at a local level,” IOC associate director John MacLeod told a congress of national Olympic committees in Prague.
He said seven countries — Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovenia — would open sport parks inspired by Olympic venues under the guidance of the Czech Republic, which originally came up with the idea for the Sochi Olympics in 2014.
An EU member of 10.6 million people, the Czech Republic registered more than 400,000 sports fans trying their hand at biathlon, curling or snowboarding, or just watching the Sochi Games on large screens in a park in central Prague in 2014.
Two years later, more than a million sports lovers made it to four summer Olympic parks across the country at the time of the Rio Games. Several Czech athletes came to meet them after returning from Brazil.
“The Czech example is something that we want to replicate across the world,” said MacLeod.
He said the goal was to “celebrate your athletes’ achievements when they return home, promote sport participation within your youth population and provide a platform for… sponsors to activate at a local level in a better way”.
Czech Olympic Committee head Jiri Kejval said the local committee had registered interest from other continents too.
“We firmly believe this will spread,” he told the Czech news agency CTK.
“Everyone watches TV and feels tempted to try it. So you have to do something to bring it to the people, to show them the sports, and to allow them to support their athletes together with others,” he added.
AFP