Organizers are still confident of a successful games, expecting interest to pick up once competition starts. The football competition was to kick off on Thursday. The official opening ceremony will be on Saturday, with medals awarded in triathlon as early as Sunday morning.

"The IOC president took a great risk to organize these Games and bet on its future," IOC Olympic Games executive director Gilbert Felli told reporters earlier this week in Singapore. "The world is going to look at it and see if it works or not."

Rogge remains optimistic that the Youth Games will educate the next generation of athletes earlier and help discourage scourges such as doping and racism.

"I believe I can say we are experts in staging major sports events," Rogge said. "But we are entering now a new field, the education field. We might make some errors in the beginning, but we will learn from them."

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