Guinea Bissau 2010 SYOG Gold Medalists

A commercial issue marking the Youth Olympics Games in Singapore has come to light. This first set is issued for Guinea Bissau with a sheetlet containing 4 stamps, and miniature sheet with a single stamp in it. The issue actually celebrates the gold medalists for several events: judo, kayaking, tennis, teble tennis and swimming. The 4 stamps in the sheetlet features the following young athletes: judo men 100 kg winner Ryosuke Igarashi from Japan, swimming women's 50 m backstroke winner Mathilde Cini from France, tennis women's single winner Daria Gavrilova from Russia, and kayaking women's K1 slalom winner Jessica Fox from Australia. The stamp on the miniature sheet features judo women 53 kg winner Miku Tashiro from Japan; the sheet selvage features 2 other gold medalists: table tennis women singles winner Gu Yuting and tennis women doubles winner Zheng Saisai, both from China. Neither sheet contains any official logo for the Singapore Youth Olympic Games, however, judoka Miku in the miniature sheet is shown clasping the games mascot Merly. Every medalist at these games were given a mini stuffed mascot, Merly for girls and Lyo for boys.

Singapore 2010 YOG Mascots

This MyStamp sheetlet was released to mark the introduction of the mascots for the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games (SYOG) - Lyo & Merly, on 21st November 2009. The sheet contains the original 4 stamps issued on 14 August 2009 to mark the 1-year countdown to the opening of the games, and labels with the SYOG logo, and the mascots. The orange creature is Lyo, a young lion, and the blue one is called Merly, supposed to be a youth version of the Merlion .... hmm ... looks that the juvenile Merlion has legs! The remaining question now is whether merlions lay eggs or have life birth ...