Olympian Leads 2012 Winter YOG Commission

Pernilla Wiberg in action at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. (Getty) (ATR) Sweden's alpine skiing gold medalist Pernilla Wiberg is to chair the IOC Evaluation Commission for the inaugural Winter Youth Olympic Games.

The announcement follows the decision of the IOC Executive Board meeting in Beijing last month to keep the field at four cities, not cutting any of the bids.

The four are Harbin (China), Innsbruck (Austria), Kuopio (Finland) and Lillehammer (Norway) .

IOC President Jacques Rogge named the seven-member commission Tuesday. The cities submitted their bid dossiers July 19.

Wiberg competed in four Olympics and has been an IOC Athletes Commission member since 2002. She also serves as a member of the IOC's Coordination Commission for Vancouver 2010 and was a member of the evaluation commission for 2010.

Rogge's choice of chair parallels his decision to install Sergey Bubka as leader of the evaluation commission for the Singapore 2010 Summer YOG. Bubka was chair of the Athletes Commission until he was succeeded by Namibia's Frank Fredericks in August.

The YOG 2012 evaluation commission members are: Victor Khotochkin, vice-president of the Russian Olympic Committee (NOC representative); Fredi Schmid, director general of the International Skating Union (Association of International Olympic Winter Sports Federations representative); and Martin Rutishauser, Swiss Olympic Association secretary general.

Also on the team are three IOC officials: Gilbert Felli, Olympic Games executive director; sports director Christophe Dubi; and Essar Gabriel, head of the Youth Olympic Games.

Later this month, the four candidate cities will have the opportunity Wiberg served as a member of the IOC Evaluation Commission for the 2010 Olympics. (ATR)to present their bid concepts to the commission via a one-hour video conference call. It will be structured in two parts: a 15-20-minute verbal presentation by the city followed by questions and answers.

The evaluation commission will then submit a report to the IOC Executive Board. The EB recommends which shortlisted cities should go through for the postal vote of IOC members in November. The winner is announced in December.

The Winter YOG 2012 will include around 1,000 athletes aged 14-18 competing in seven sports - skiing, ice hockey, biathlon, bobsled, curling, luge and figure skating.

With reporting from Mark Bisson.

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