Press Releases
27.10.2009
1. Asian Yoth Games in Singapor
Late June 2009 saw the opening of the 1st Asian Youth Games (AYG) in Singapore. The event was attended by some 6,200 spectators, who provided enthusiastic support to the 1,400 young athletes taking part. No fewer than a hundred and seventy chain hoists from ChainMaster were deployed during the opening ceremony in the Indoor Stadium in Singapore. Eighty-eight of them were already installed in the stadium, being BGV-D8 hoists with a safe working load of 1,000 kg equipped with encoders, load sensors and computerized control. These were complemented by a further eighty-two BGV-D8 rigging lifts, also with SWLs of 1,000 kg brought in specially for the event.
The opening ceremony combined three themes: ??Garden in the City?, ??Asian Zest? and ??Spirit of Evolution?. It began with four hundred schoolchildren from Singapore dancing to a medley of songs in a variety of Asian languages. The climax of the ceremony came when all the lights were extinguished other than those trained upon a pair of dancers on a platform seventeen metres up, which was gradually lowered. The evening was rounded off with a performance of modern dance.
The Guest of Honour for the evening was the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, who was accompanied by numerous high-ranking representatives of Olympic committees. The inaugural Asian Youth Games proved to be a tremendous success, leading Timothy Fok, Vice President of the Asian Olympic Committee, to state in his opening address: ??I am sure that with these Youth Games, Asia is opening a new chapter in the history of the Olympic movement and that they are sure to spawn numerous imitators.?
