If Simon Cowell had as good an eye for sporting talent as he has for precocious hip-hoppers and matronly warblers he would have been walking on air (as well as his built-up brogues) around Heathrow’s Holiday Inn earlier this week.

For assembled there, being kitted out prior to flying that night to Singapore, were some 40 of the nation’s finest young sportsmen and women.

As not-so-simple Simon has discovered to his financial advantage, Britain may well have talent when it comes to showbiz. But it also has it in abundance in the games our young people play.

The place was teeming with teenage talent from just about every Olympic sport excitedly heading for the inaugural Youth Olympics in Singapore and all hoping to make a name for themselves.

A few already have, like world champion diver Tom Daley, no longer a boy wonder at 16, and worldly enough to inform us in the Team GB handbook that apart from scooping even more medals his ambition is to meet Cheryl Cole. There was 400 metres runner Victoria Ohuruogu, Christine’s little sister, not-so-little big shot Sophie McKinna ,15-year-old  Great Yarmouth shot-put protege of Geoff Capes and Sam Oldham, a gymnast tipped to exceed the Olympic bronze medal achievement of training partner Louis Smith.

But by and large the British Olympic Association’s youth squad are not familiar to the general public, appreciated as they may be by families and friends and within their own particular sport.

The hope is that the forthcoming Games will be a springboard to fame, perhaps even fortune, in London two years hence, or more likely Rio in 2016.

These kids hold the key to Britain’ sporting future, and so widespread  is the talent from archery to taekwondo, athletics to triathlon, that it augurs well for some golden moments in the Olympics to come.

Before then, though, these Youth Olympics will be a real test of the extent of their ability. Not just because of what the event is, but,  where it is taking place.

Hot, humid Singapore is not normally a place one would associate with big-time sport. When I worked there in the eighties, as a deputy editor of the renowned English language newspaper The Straits Times, fun and games were simply not on the agenda of the authoritarian government headed by the redoubtable Lee Kuan  Yew.  

Education, eating and making money occupied the top three places on Singapore’s podium of priorities. Sport (which could be defined as anything outside jogging), was an also ran, receiving little in the way of encouragement or inducements.

But if evidence is needed to prove that sport has the power to change political will it comes with the staging of the Youth Olympics. From being among the last places on earth one would expect to be associated with sports meet of such magnitude, this tiny multi-cultural former British colony, the size of the Isle of Wight, has seen the sporting light under the enlightened stewardship of Lee’s son, Lee Hsien Loong.

Now Singapore has discovering that not only does sport bring social benefits healthwise but there’s money and political kudos in it, too. Business, as they say, is business.



Hence their successful bid for the Youth Olympics, which follows the  staging of two night-time F1 Grands Prix and hosting the International Olympic Committee congress when London got the nod for 2012.

"Yes, we have now recognised the powerful influence sport has on society," the Singapore Sports Council senior director Bervyn Lee tells us.

So next week the young Brits will be among the 3,600 athletes from 203 nations competing in 26 Olympics sports. Also there will be will be 30 London youngsters, who between them speak six languages, chosen to assist as volunteers, a reward for the spare time work there with underprivileged kids. A really nice touch, that, as is the appointment of two outstanding and most delightful British Olympians to act as team mentors, modern pentathlon silver medallist Georgina Harland and Amy Williams, the bubbly bob skeleton queen of speed. 

All will find that Singapore, sticky and sultry as it is climatically, is the perfect host nation-as long as the guests stick to the rather rigid rules. Penalties for misbehaviour can be severe in a nation where hanging and flogging anachronistically remain in vogue.

So what will Singapore reap from the Youth Olympics? Well, should they be successful, it will be another feather in the cap of Ser Miang Ng, their International Olympic Committee member who became a vice-president under Jacques Rogge on the strength of his masterminding of that fateful 2005 IOC congress.

How incredible that a country which once had no time for sport might now have a Singaporean in contention for the most powerful post on Planet Sport,  the presidency of the IOC. Fascinating thought.

So is the notion that Singapore is using the Youth Olympics as a barometer for a bid to stage the Commonwealth Games in 2022. And why not? It seems the ideal place for them: safe, sanitised, super-efficient and economically stable: Quite a contrast to New Delhi…and, er, come to think of it, Glasgow!

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics and 10 Commonwealth Games