JUSTINE EYES DOHA RETURN - Qatar Olympic Committee

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WHY UNIVERSALISATION IS the key to the future Lamine Diack, President of the IAAF, athletics’ world governing body, looks ahead to the 2010 World Indoor Championships in Doha and considers some of the major issues facing the sport he loves. Above: Lamine Diack – eight years at the helm of the IAAF. The world’s leading track and field athletes will head for Doha in 2010 to compete in the IAAF World Indoor Championships, one of the most prestigious events on the international sports calendar. The event will be held in the award-winning Aspire complex, which will provide the perfect stage for athletes aiming to deliver the ultimate performance after months of training geared towards the quest for Gold. For the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the world governing body of Track and Field, the decision to award the World Indoor Championships to Qatar is recognition of the country’s established relationship with international athletics and a vote of confidence in its ability to deliver a world-class event. And for Lamine Diack, the Senegal-born president of the IAAF, the choice of Qatar has even greater significance. Now in the early months of his second term in office, Diack is a firm believer that the future of Athletics lies in taking athletics to new countries and engaging youth and that the Middle East and Asia are hugely important marketplaces. The ‘white-haired man from Senegal’ - as he describes himself - is a former French long-jump champion and a passionate lover of football. As a player he was a quality midfielder before injury ended his football career but as a coach he took the Senegal team to the brink of World Cup qualification long before the nation’s leading players had made an impact on the world stage. 34 QatarSport Q1.08
the big interview Above: Lamine Diack sees exciting times ahead for athletics in the Middle East. He has been running the Monaco-based IAAF for eight years, taking the job as a stop-gap after the death of the Italian Primo Nebiollo and subsequently winning two elected terms. Now, in the early months of his second and final stint in the hot seat, he has a clear mission to handover a sport which has led a successful fight against doping, built a compelling and sustainable commercial structure and ensured its future by engaging kids around the world. Universal sport “One of my main priorities as IAAF President, in my final four-year mandate, is to work hard for what I call the “universalisation” of our sport,” Diack told Qatar Sport. “Already, with 212 Member Federations, the IAAF represents one of the few sports that can gather the whole world at a sporting event. But now, I want the championships also to be spread all over the world. It is really important for the worldwide development of athletics that developing, ambitious countries have the chance to organise top competitions in athletics and I believe that the Middle East, particularly the Gulf region, has tremendous potential.” The president is certainly confident that Qatar has the facilities, infrastructure and event management skills to ensure the success of the World Indoor Championships. “I am sure that they will do an excellent job organising this competition. The facilities are superb and there is a lot of enthusiasm and good will amongst the hosts,” he said. “The main advantage of Qatar is that they have proved to be a ‘friend’ of athletics for many years now. I still recall “The main advantage of Qatar is that they have proved to be a ‘friend’ of athletics for many years now. I still recall when the Emir personally informed me that he had a real love for our sport and was anxious to help it develop in his country.” when the Emir personally informed me that he had a real love for our sport and was anxious to help it develop in his country. Originally, he organised a Grand Prix meeting only for men, then, in 1998, the Grand Prix competition was open to women as well, which proved to be a great success. This meeting is now one of the fastest growing on the international circuit. Doha also hosted the IAAF Grand Prix Final in 2000, just after the Sydney Games and, since then, the country has gone from strength to strength, not only in terms of a booming economy, but in its efforts to attract sport.” Growth potential Like many other leaders of world sport, Lamine Diack was clearly impressed by the way the Track and Field programme at the 2006 Asian Games operated. “All of us who were in Doha for those Games were extremely impressed by the organisational efforts and it is clear that track and field will always be at the heart of any major Games, whether at an Olympic or an Area level,” he said. “This is something that we don’t take for granted Q1.08 QatarSport 35
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