500 days to Pune 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games
1st June 2007Today marks 500 days until the start of the third Commonwealth Youth Games (CYG), taking place in the city of Pune in India.
Team England athletes will compete in all nine of the sports on the Pune programme – athletics, badminton, boxing, shooting, swimming, table tennis, tennis, weightlifting and wrestling.
The Commonwealth Youth Games have proved a springboard for talented young athletes to sample the competitive atmosphere of an international multi-sports Games.
Gymnast Louis Smith is among the athletes to represent Team England in past Commonwealth Youth Games.
Smith, now 18 and targeting a place on the GB team for the Beijing 2008 Olympics, won a gold on the pommel horse, a team silver and a bronze in the parallel bars at the Bendigo 2004 Commonwealth Youth Games in Australia.
He went on to win a place in the senior Team England team for the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, where he struck gold on the pommel horse and won a team all-around bronze.
“Bendigo was my first big competition with lots of different sports and it was definitely useful,” said Louis, who lives near Peterborough. “It was interesting to see how other people do things, like preparing for their events. It’s good to learn all the time.”
Other young athletes in action in Team England colours at the Bendigo 2004 Commonwealth Youth Games included heptathlete Jessica Ennis.
She won silver medals in the 100m hurdles and the long jump in Bendigo and followed that up with an impressive bronze medal in the heptathlon at the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games.
Boxer James DeGale was a member of the England boxing team that swept the board at Bendigo, winning all six gold medals. He went on to win Commonwealth middleweight bronze in Melbourne, aged 20.
England’s young athletes have fared well at both of the two Commonwealth Youth Games held to date. England topped the final overall medals table at the Edinburgh 2000 CYG with 95 medals – 36 golds, 41 silvers and 18 bronzes – and finished second to Australia at the Bendigo 2004 CYG with 86 medals – 31 golds, 29 silvers and 26 bronzes.
The 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games take place in Pune from 12th to 18th October. They are part of the build-up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games, hosted in Delhi in October 2010.