The challenge for Youth Olympic Games organisers in Singapore has been to make them distinct, and yet still Olympic. Nowhere more than at the Opening Ceremony.

Olympic Founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin once said "the Olympiad should include solemnity and ceremony" to make it distinct from "mere world championships".

What then ,would the Baron have made of events on the waterfront in Singapore?  

The changes were apparent from the very start.This was first Olympic Opening ceremony held not in a stadium, but  in the heart of the host city.

A long parade of nations was avoided. The teams entered in a style more reminiscent of a Closing Ceremony and settled in to enjoy the entire show.

The 204 flag bearers followed later. Led according to long established tradition by the Greeks, their entry was accompanied by music synonymouis with previous Olympic Games. Hand in Hand for Seoul 88, Amigos Para Siempre ( Barcelona 92) Reach (Atlanta 96) Sydney's theme song The Flame and  Forever Friends from Beijing.

The Olympic flag was trooped  into the stadium by eight great champions from the past, including Youth Olympic Ambassador Yelena Isinbeyeva. But in another break with tradition, the colour party were met by eight Singaporean Youth Athletes.The flag was thus passed to the young generation .

The Olympic Anthem is the only part of Olympic ceremonial which dates back to the 1896 Games.

Here, as at the 2005 IOC Session in Singapore, the hosts performed it  in the original Greek as intended by composer Spyros Samaras and lyricist Costis Palamas. London 2012 please note!

The Olympic oath offered something new. Introduced in 1920 and first taken by Belgian.Fencer Victor Boin, the ceremony has incorporated a similar oath for judghes since 1972. 

Here for the first time, David Lin Fong Jock took the stand on behalf of the coaches: "Committing ourselves to ensuring that athletes combine sport, culture and education in accordance with the fundamental princilples of Olympism."

The  use of the harbour was not entirely withour precedent. In 1988 the Opening Ceremony Seoul Olympic Games began with a display from the Han river, and in 2000, the flame itself made the last stage of its journey to Sydney's Stadium Australia up the Paramatta river.

Appropriately then, the flame was lit by a local hero in Sailing,  Byte world champion Darren Choy. The only other sailor to light an Olympic cauldron was Greece's Worid Champion windsurfer Nikos Kaklamanakis in 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Philip Barker, a freelance journalist, has been on the editorial team of the Journal of Olympic History and is credited with having transformed the publication into one of the most respected historical publications on the history of the Olympic Games. He is also an expert on Olympic Music, a field which is not generally well known.