The First Children of Asia 2019 Winter Games
on Sakhalin

Customer: Children of Asia International Committee

Location: Sakhalin

Project duration: January-February 2019

Solution provided: BARS.EXPO-2, a system for check-in, accreditation and access control of participants of competitions and public events, ticket sales at the box office and online via a ticket sales module

Result obtained: successfully organised the first Children of Asia Winter Games, which stimulated the development of children's sports and sports infrastructure in the city

Cooperation between Bars IT as part of DataKrat Group of Companies and the organising committee of the Children of Asia Games started in 2011. Bars IT was a partner of the organising committee at the Children of Asia Summer Games in 2012 and 2016 in Yakutsk – the company was engaged in accreditation of participants and access control to the events of the summer games.

In February 2019, the first Children of Asia Winter Games were to be held in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the administrative centre of Sakhalin Region. To understand the scale of the event, let us tell you more about it.


What the Children of Asia Games Are

The Children of Asia International Sports Games are organised under the patronage of the President of Russia, the International Olympic Committee and UNESCO. Athletes 16 years old and younger participate in the Games. The scale of these competitions is at the level of student universiades. Among the winners of the Children of Asia Summer Games there are already Olympians and Russian champions.

Young athletes at the Summer and Winter Games have their entire sporting careers ahead of them. They embody the Olympic prospects and hopes of the country. So the Children of Asia Games are comparable to professional competitions of adult athletes.

Athletes from 20 countries in the Asia-Pacific region took part in the first Winter Games and 93 sets of medals were awarded in 8 sports:

• biathlon;
• alpine skiing;
• cross-country skiing;
• ski jumping;
• snowboarding;
• figure skating;
• ice hockey;
• short track.

The Russian Post issued a special series of envelopes and postcards with Games symbols. A lot of souvenirs dedicated to the Games were sold, including a limited edition of badges, plaids, hats and mittens.

The Olympic torch relay took place before the start of the Games. It travelled from Yakutsk to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The Olympic Torch was lit at the opening ceremony and extinguished at the closing ceremony.

The awarding committees of the Games included prominent athletes. Such sports celebrities as Vyacheslav Fetisov, Anna Bogaly, Elena Vyalbe and Olga Bogoslovskaya came to the Games to support the young athletes. The medals for the champions were carried out by model girls, led by Anastasia Khan, Mrs Sakhalin 2018.

Various activities were organised for guests of the games throughout the city. An ice city was opened for children, where they could ride on slides and dance to music. Before and after the competition, all sports grounds were open for trial training for children who wanted to practice the sports presented at the games.

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and its sports infrastructure were perfectly suited for such large-scale events as the Children of Asia Games. Right in the city centre there is a world-class alpine skiing complex called Gorny Vozdukh – with ski jumps, downhill and slalom slopes that are certified by experts to host international competitions in various types of alpine skiing. There are several ice arenas in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. About a year before the Children of Asia Winter Games, a ski-biathlon complex was opened in the city.


Highlights of the Winter Games

Without a doubt, the most spectacular moments of the Children of Asia Winter Games were the opening (9 February) and closing (16 February) ceremonies held at the Spartak Stadium. In the presence of almost 5,000 spectators, both colourful ceremonies were held in the spirit of the Olympic Games and ended with a colourful fireworks display.

At the opening ceremony, the anthem of the host country was played and the Russian flag was raised. The national teams of all participating countries of the Children of Asia Winter Games entered the stadium. The athletes and spectators of the Games were welcomed by Olga Golodets, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government, and Pavel Kolobkov, Minister of Sport of Russia 2016-2020.

The audience watched a rich concert programme with traditional dances of the region and the country. One of the highlights of the opening ceremony was a fire show. The culmination of the ceremony was the appearance of torchbearers on the ship. Their torches lit the flame of the Games on the lighthouse, a beautiful symbol of the Children of Asia Winter Games, as well as multicoloured Olympic rings.

The closing ceremony was no less bright. The spectators warmly bid farewell to the participants and the Children of Asia Games themselves – their flames went out. The show programme included numbers by the Yakut dance ensemble "Gulun", ballet on ice from Moscow and St. Petersburg. The star of the ceremony was Vlad Topalov.

TASK AT HAND

Bars IT's tasks at the Winter Games:

1. Accepting applications for participation.
2. Participant accreditation.
3. Control of access of participants to competition, training, catering and accommodation facilities.
4. Control of vehicle access to car parks adjacent to sports facilities.
5. Ticket sales for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games.
6. Access control at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games.

In everything Bars IT Team did at the games, the most important point for the customer was the peace of mind of the participants and visitors. The company had to make the games a real festive occasion for the children, so that they would have only happy, positive impressions. Therefore, Bars IT Team had to work quickly, accurately and with an individual approach to everyone. The companyhad to take into account the high status of many participants and guests of the games.

It is more difficult to hold winter games than summer ones. Firstly, due to weather conditions – the access control equipment was operating in high humidity and sub-zero temperatures for the entire duration of the Games. Secondly, because Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is located on an island and is even more remote from central Russia than Yakutsk. Any equipment and consumables can be brought to and from Sakhalin only by plane, which significantly complicates logistics, but Bars IT successfully coped with this issue as well.

Working at such an event is both prestigious and challenging. Due to the scale of the Games, check-in, accreditation, control of access of people and vehicles to sports venues had to be carried out in coordination with numerous special services of different levels. The number of security personnel was second only to the number of competitors.


Games Participants Accreditation

With BARS.EXPO-2 Bars IT provided a system of pre-registration of participants of all categories (1,196 athletes and 450 referees, about 1,000 volunteers and several thousand journalists), accreditation, issuance of colour ID badges with photo and contact marks. The Bars IT Team equipped 15 workplaces for ID badge issuing.

An ID badge system is a requirement for events of this level and a prerequisite for ensuring order. At the Children of Asia 2019 Games, ID badges were required for participants to access sports venues and catering outlets. Therefore, it was necessary to keep a close eye on the availability and safety of ID badges.

Printed ID badges were laminated with holographic film. Obviously, ID badge issuance with several degrees of protection (holographic film, hologram, microprinting) require time. Four days before the start of the games Bars IT Team started issuing ID badges and in a short period of time we issued several thousand ID badges.

Organised delegations preferred to check in for the games in advance to receive a set of badges. They had to fill in information about themselves and/or team members. All lists of checked-in participants were entered into the BARS.EXPO-2 system. If necessary, the security service could always check any list.

It was especially difficult to deal with those participants who were accredited at the last moment. People were in a hurry, nervous, pushing Bars IT employees to do everything faster. Bars IT had to work at an accelerated pace.


Selling Spectator Tickets

A small part of the tickets for the games was donated, for example, to orphanages. The organisers tried to give children from different islands of the region the opportunity to attend the bright, unforgettable opening and closing festivities of the games.

Most of the tickets were freely sold at the city box offices and on the website, using our online ticketing module. The bar-coded tickets purchased – printed or electronic (in smartphones) – were used by spectators to pass through terminal-readers at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games.

Tickets for both ceremonies (3,500 for each) sold out in 7 minutes. Many requests to buy tickets came from mainland Russia. People were ready to fly to Sakhalin to see the Children of Asia Games with their own eyes.

SOLUTION

Access Control

To ensure access control at the Winter Games, we used DK-V 2000 terminal-readers and mobile devices that are comfortable to hold in your hand – 14 SEUIC A9 mobile data collection terminals and 65 tablets.

Vehicles travelling to the sports venues also needed to be controlled. Bars IT Team printed and issued personalised barcoded passes for cars. Only with this pass the vehicles could enter the car parks of the sports venues.

Information from the pass (make, model, state number, colour of the vehicle) was read by the data collection terminal. Only if all the data of the real vehicle and the information about it in the pass matched, the driver was allowed to enter the car park.

All vehicles of special services (ambulance, police, rescuers) had such passes. Ambulances were on duty at all events of the Games, as winter sports are traumatic.

Controlling Catering

Some categories of game participants were entitled to one breakfast, one lunch and one dinner each day. Such a participant could only enter a food outlet with an ID badge. If the BARS.EXPO-2 system recorded that a participant of the Games had breakfast at one of the food outlets provided by the organisers, he/she was not entitled to have breakfast at another such outlet.

It was difficult to predict the load of each particular food outlet due to the movement of the participants of the games from the place of training to the place of competition or awarding, shifting the time of starts. Volunteers often waited at the food venue for one team or another to check that people had eaten. It was necessary to record this for mutual accounting after the games, when the catering venues received information on how many portions of breakfast, lunch and dinner they provided to the participants of the games.

Differantiation of Participant Flows

It was necessary to differentiate access to all facilities so that the flows of different categories of participants, such as athletes and referees, would not overlap. This is a requirement for sports competitions.

It is important that participants and spectators enter all sports venues from different entrances. Therefore, Bars IT Team made several entrances to each sports venue – separately for athletes, referees and spectators.

Such an entrance organisation is also necessary in order to save time for the participants of the games. It is unthinkable that athletes and referees, instead of participating in competitions, have to stand in a general queue to enter the sports facility. For an athlete, being late for the start equals a missed chance to win a prize and qualify for other, even higher-level competitions. This could not be allowed to happen.

Overcoming Challenges

Bars IT Team of 8 people worked round the clock – we had to constantly solve all complicated and controversial issues. One of the difficulties Bars IT faced was the resale of spectator tickets.

The Games Committee warned all those wishing to watch the opening and closing of the Games that tickets could only be bought at the box office and on the website – never from unofficial sources. In any case, there were people with multiplied tickets – that is, the original buyer of the ticket resold it to several people.

Together with volunteers and the security service, we had to sort out who passed on the multipliedticket – its real owner or not. Even in the most difficult and unpleasant situations, Bars IT Team found a way out. We tried to seat such spectators in unfilled seats. Bars IT was especially attentive to children, in order to preserve their impressions of the games as a children's festival.

It happened that people who were not accredited entered sports venues. They used other people's ID badges, lost or stolen. In such cases, the photo on the ID badge of its owner helped. With its help, it was possible to figure out who the ID badge belonged to.

The photo was also needed for the security monitor. This was used by the security staff to check who had entered the sports venue using which ID badge. Each time a badge is read by security staff, a picture of the ID badge holder is displayed on the screen. If security detects an offence, security staff decide what to do with the offender.

RESULT

In general, the Games went well. Bars IT can confidently say that the Children of Asia Games have had a significant impact on the promotion of sports in the Sakhalin Region. Children's and adult sports in the region will definitely develop. After the games, the director of the ice arena in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk said that their hockey section had recruited children for several teams. And these are only the children who have been selected.

The sports facilities renovated and built for the Games provided excellent infrastructure for other competitions. In February 2020, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk hosted the Alpine Skiing World Cup for athletes with limited (in fact, unlimited) abilities. At the end of the same month, the "Anna Bogaly Cup –SKIMiR" for young biathletes.

In 2023, the Children of Asia Winter Games were held again in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. And Bars IT helped to organise the second Winter Games. Their organisers know that the BARS.EXPO-2 accreditation and access control system ensures the replenishment of the event visitors' database, order at the entrance for people and entry for vehicles, compliance with the rules of sports competitions, security, ticket sales and correct operation of all services for participants and spectators. During the whole period of the games, Bars IT Team accompanies the work of BARS.EXPO-2 and solves all arising issues.

The company gained a great experience in organising a winter international event of an impressive scale and an excellent project in its portfolio. The Games Organising Committee gave Bars IT feedback on what it needs to improve in its solutions. We know how we need to develop our product to bring even more value to customers.