by Alieu Ceesay in Doha, Qatar
In observance of the Qatari National Sports Day, celebrated February 9, each year, delegates from around the world attending the 79th AIPS Congress in Doha on Tuesday visited that nation’s multi-purpose sports complex known as the Aspire Dome Sports Academy in Doha.
The academy, according to officials is exclusively for boys between the ages of 12 and 17. The main aim of the academy is to represent healthy lifestyle in Qatar and better develop and promote sports in the country by producing athletes that could go on to represent Qatar in local and international competitions.
Doha is now seen as a capital of sports with the country competing in nine sporting events internationally at the time of the Congress. The country has also hosted important international sporting events and would stage the 2022 World Cup.
The Aspire Sports Academy focuses on 14 sporting disciplines; notably football, athletics, fencing, shooting, table tennis and lawn tennis among others. A centre that has in the past hosted big times like Manchester United, Arsenal, AC Milan and PSG, among others, for their pre-season tours, the Aspire Academy is a government-funded institution where the athletes partake in normal school lessons with all of them living in the centre.
“Aspire Academy was founded in 2004 with the goal to find and develop the best young male Qatari athletes, whilst also providing them with high quality secondary school education. Since the population in Qatar is small the identification of talents at an early age is important and therefore we cooperate with schools and sports federations; we also have multi-sports skills development centres across Qatar to promote sports and prepare talented youths before they reach the appropriate age to be considered for the Academy,” an official told the delegates.
The Academy is presently host to 239 athletes who are being given 24 hours clinical service with a nutrition department and guides who guide them as teenagers. The athletes between the ages of 12 and 13 spend two days in the Academy and the rest with their families, while 14 to 17 years old boys stay the whole week in the centre and the weekend with their families.
“In 2014, the results from our football programme were promising, including the fact that all players of the Qatari U-19 football national team that won the AFC-U-19 Championship in Myanmar, and qualified for the 2015 FIFA U-20 World Cup in New Zealand, were past or current students of Aspire Academy. It is, of course, one of the longer term goals of the Academy that some of our graduates will represent Qatar at the FIFA World Cup 2022,” the Aspire Academy official added.
For the international athletes at the centre, their families are allowed to visit them three times a year with the support of the Academy.
