ÖOC President Karl Stoss, secretary general Peter Mennel and Chef de Mission Christoph Sieber head the delegation, which is made up of 65 athletes and 51 officials.

A total of 21 girls and 44 boys, aged between 15 and 18 years old, will compete at the winter edition of the EYOF, which is scheduled to take place between January 25 to 30.

Among the athletes are 16-year-old ice hockey forward Yannic Pilloni, the son of Patrick Pilloni who represented Austria at the Nagano 1998 Winter Olympic Games, and 17-year-old Nordic combined skier Phillipp Kuttin, the son of three-time Olympic medallist and two-time world ski jumping champion Heinz Kuttin.

The youngest athlete is ski jumper Tyrolean Timna Moser, who turned 15 on December 26, while biathlete Maximilian Eberhard is the oldest team member at 18 years of age.

Reinhard Divis, the first Austrian to play in the National Hockey League (NHL) representing the St. Louis Blues, is one of the 51 officials named by the Austrian Olympic Committee ©Getty Images




A dozen of the athletes come from the host region Vorarlberg, while the state of Tyrol and the city of Salzburg are well-represented with 13 and 10 respectively.

The athletes met in Abtenau earlier this month where they took part in workshops relating to nutrition and cooking, team building and media training, and also met snowboard Olympic champion Julia Dujmovits and downhill world champion Michael Walchhofer.

The line-up of officials includes former Nordic combined skier Günther Csar, a bronze medallist at the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympic Games and world champion in 1991, and ice hockey goaltender Reinhard Divis, the first Austrian to play in the National Hockey League (NHL) representing the St. Louis Blues between 2001 and 2006.

Around 950 young athletes from a total of 45 European countries are expected in Vorarlberg and Liechtenstein.

A total of 28 competitions across eight sports - Alpine skiing, biathlon, cross country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, ski jumping and snowboarding - are on the programme.

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