CHANGCHUN, Jilin province-Twenty-three Chinese teenagers will head to the first Youth Winter Olympics, to be held from Jan 13-22 in Innsbruck, Austria.

The Chinese delegation will include 13 females and 10 males aged 14-18, 10 of whom have international experience.

Among them are some of China's rising stars.

Figure skater Yan Han, 15, won silver medals at the Junior Grand Prix final in 2010 and 2011. He has won five Junior Grand Prix events.

Figure skating pair Yu Xiaoyu and Jin Yang, female skater Li Zijun and speed skater Yang Fan have also won medals in international youth tournaments.

Xiao Tian, deputy chief of the General Administration of Sport of China, said the Youth Winter Olympics is a platform for young athletes to communicate with each other, as well as a chance for China to scout more talent for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

"The first Youth Olympics was held in Singapore in 2010, and this is the first winter edition. Compared with the senior Olympic Games, the youth Games displays more emphasis on the transmission of Olympic spirit and facilitates communication among youngsters," said Xiao, who will serve as head of the Chinese delegation.

"Meanwhile, the Youth Olympics is also a sports event. From the current situation of our country, we still aim at selecting outstanding athletes through matches to prepare for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and I hope the youngsters will be able to show how they performed in training during the games," Xiao said at a press conference during the 12th National Winter Games.

Xiao also said China won't likely surpass what it achieved at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics-five gold medals, two silver and four bronze-in Sochi in 2014.

"Winter sports are still not as developed as summer sports in China. We had considerable achievements in Vancouver, and our strength will still be in short track speed-skating in Sochi," Xiao said. "But the situation in figure skating is not as good, and it will be very hard for us to defend our medal in curling, as America and Canada are much stronger than us.

"We have made definite improvement in snowboard, freestyle skiing and ski jumping, but we are still lagging behind in some big sports, such as alpine skiing, luge and skeleton," Xiao said.

China Daily