Hobart Switches Gears

Bid founder and president of the Hobart Organising Group for Major Events (HOGME) Ben Waterworth says that with the focus of the world switching to London, it's an important time to realize how big of a drawing card the Olympics can be to a city.

He says although the goal was to bid for the 2020 Games, "given the finalists for these Games have been announced, we have had a lot of people forget about us. Changing over to a Youth Olympics bid certainly has given us a more realistic goal of bringing the Olympics to Hobart, and with a Youth Olympics being the less than a quarter the size of what we will see in London, and going off already built venues and infrastructure, it fits in perfectly with a city the size of Hobart to be able to host such an event".

He added, "we have held talks with numerous politicians on both sides of politics as well as other groups and even sponsors, and received a large amount of positive feedback that this can happen. It's time now for the talk to stop and for the action to happen".

The group has until 2016 to receive formal recognition from the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) to not only bring the Olympics back to Australia, but also the Youth Olympics.