The event's opening ceremony was held on Wednesday (22 December 2010) and was attended by the Rector of ITB, Prof. Akhmaloka. The Olympics are to go on until Friday, the 11th of February, 2011.

In this year's Olympics, Pondra promised more peaceful organizing than previous Olympics. "We have anticipated so that there wouldn't be any riots like last time by better socializing of the rules of the games, signing MoUs with the student union presidents, and also by preparing a dedicated Discipline Committee," told this Metallurgical Engineering 2008 major. "The Student Affairs Office has also gave their approval."

Passionate and Dynamic

This year's Olympic mascots depict the spirit that the games are promoting: passionate and dynamic. "This is the spirit that we're trying to spread to everyone. We want them to be passionate in every game, but also dynamic in their various activities," Pondra went on. This year's mascots are a duet of elephants; a red one, called Gan and a blue one, called Nesha. Red represents passion, and blue represents dynamics.

However, there are still several competitions that lack enough participants. As a result, many winners only became so because of walk-outs. Pondra analyzed the reason as the games' being held during the student holidays.

Two New Competitions

A breakthrough decision taken by the organizers were to introduce two brand-new competitions, wall-climbing (male and female) as well as futsal (male). "Futsal's a really popular sport, so we decided to add it as a new competition in this year's Olympics," told Pondra. Pondra added that wall-climbing will likely be popular among the contestants, because of its simple, yet challenging nature.

Another breakthrough from the organizers was in publishing. Pondra, who was born on Magetan, 2nd November 1990, explained that this year's Olympics preferred paperless forms of publishing, such as through social networks like Facebook and Twitter and through the games' official website. Paper ads and banners were generally avoided to minimize the amount of waste.

In accordance with the games' theme, Pondra hoped that every game would not only talk about winning and losing, but also how to live the spirit of the game in everyday life. "I also hope that through these Olympics, the positive values of sports like honesty, discipline and teamwork can penetrate the cultures of the contestants and the student unions," said Pondra, ending the conversation.