JUSTINE EYES DOHA RETURN - Qatar Olympic Committee

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News in Brief HE Sheikh Saoud Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, QOC Secretary General, praised the performance of Qatari riders in the HH Heir Apparent Show Jumping Championship at the Qatar Equestrian Federation circuit in January. HE Sheikh Saoud said that Qatar now has a wide base of riders and can build on the gold medal achievements of the Asian Games. 17 teams lined up for the sixth Tour of Qatar (27 January - February 1) with last year’s winner Tim Boonen, the Belgian former World Champion in the saddle again for the international cycling season’s opening race. This year’s Tour was made up of six stages and covered a total distance of 710 kilometres. Mohamed Salh Idriss, the 19-year-old ASPIRE student, who came an astonishing second in December’s Lisbon Half Marathon, hopes to compete in two more events this year before contemplating a possible jump to the full marathon. Idriss beat all but one of the 1,507-man field of athletes, from 34 different nations in Portugal. The result was a new personal best by a margin of almost seven minutes. The opening round of the World Superbike Championship will take place at the Losail International Circuit in February. The track tested the riders before the New Year when the Pirelli Test programme came to Losail. In these practice sessions, the Australian Troy Bayliss posted the fastest time ahead of his great rival Troy Corser. The second quickest rider was Corser’s team-mate and 2007 championship runner-up, Noriyuki Haga. Showcasing ‘Sport for Life’ An exhibition to launch the Qatar Olympic Committee’s vision for sport in Qatar under its new slogan - ‘Sport For Life’ - was one of the highlights of the ‘Life – be part of it’ show at the International Exhibition Centre in Doha in November QOC’s participation at the exhibition was supervised by Mrs. Khowla Khalid, who worked alongside a team of QOC staff from the departments of public relations, human resources, sports facilities and sports affairs to deliver the ‘Sport For Life’ message to the public. “We had an incredibly positive response from visitors to the exhibition,” said Mrs Khalid. “It’s so important for the community and for sport in Qatar that QOC delivers our message of Sport for Life to every social group. QOC is committed to spreading this message and the event provided the perfect platform to showcase our vision.” QOC’s participation at the exhibition came with the full support of HE Sheikh Saoud Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, QOC Secretary General. Three Qatari basketball teams will take part in GCC and Arab basketball championships in April. Defending champions Al-Rayyan and runnerup Al Arabi will play in the GCC basketball clubs tournament which will take place in Doha, April 25 - 30. The Qatar men’s national team will take part in the Arab Championship in Jordan from April 23 to May 5, 2008. 8 QatarSport Q1.08
Q1.08.news Equestrian events raise Doha’s profile Show Jumping’s new gala series, the Global Champions Tour, with a total of Euro 5.5 million in prize money at stake, is coming to Qatar, April 10-12, 2008 The Doha Grand Prix will mark the first stage of this year’s Global Champions Tour, and is the only event in the series to be hosted in the Gulf region. The series was created by the Eurosport Group and features some of the world’s most prestigious outdoor show jumping events rolled into a single championship. As well as Doha, the Tour will travel to Germany, France, Monaco, Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy and Brazil, and feature some of the world’s leading riders, including Rodrigo Pessoa, Ludo Philippaerts, Ludger Beerbaum and Beezie Madden. The riders will be competing for a minimum prize money of Euro 400,000 at each Grand Prix. Hosting the Doha Grand Prix represents a major success for the Qatar Olympic Committee, which has made the event an integral part of its seven-year strategic plan. The 2008 Global Champions Tour will showcase Doha to the world as live transmission is sent throughout Eurosport’s network reaching over 110 millions homes across 59 countries. Qatar, of course, has a long history of hosting equestrian events on a national, regional and international scale. Doha plays host to a number of international FEI sanctioned events throughout the year and in 2008 will host the 16th Qatar International Dressage Championship, February 25 - 27, and the Qatar 8th International Equestrian Championship Jumping Event, March 6 - 9. The Qatar Show Jumping national team showed their talent earlier this year when they participated in the Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Al Sharjah Championships, including the Arab League Show Jumping Championship qualifiers for the World Cup finals. The Doha 2006 three-day event gold medalists Awad Al Qahtani, Rashid Faraj Al Adba, Ali Al Merri and Abdullah Al Ujail were among the Qatari delegation to the United Arab Emirates. Ludo Philippaerts is a star name on the Global Champions Tour. Winning the anti-doping race Qatar has become a shining light in the promotion of antidoping measures in the Gulf region. In December, the Qatar Olympic Committee signed a landmark agreement with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to establish a regional anti-doping laboratory in Qatar. Sheikh Saoud said that the agreement with WADA was the first step in making Qatar a permanent centre of anti-doping services for the Gulf Cooperation Countries. But the move has also added impetus to a concerted campaign by the Qatar National Anti-Doping Commission to educate and prevent cheating in Qatari sport. The QOC established the Commission on March 7, 2005 to carry out the anti-doping function on behalf of the governing body and act as the independent anti-doping organisation for Qatar. This year, the Commission is planning to celebrate a National Anti-Doping Day for the first time on March 7 as the focal point of numerous initiatives across professional and amateur sport in Qatar. The Commission has already conducted education programmes among Qatar’s sporting community - a move that included an anti-doping workshop for the Professional League Committee in January - and many other educational activities are planned for the future. The workshops, seminars, meetings and lectures are directed at athletes, coaches, physiotherapists, administrators and all other supporting personnel. They aim to highlight five main issues: anti-doping rule violation; the international standard of testing; the therapeutic use exemption; the rights and the responsibilities of the athletes; and the standard of the result management. The Commission has begun anti-doping testing in Qatar’s football, basketball, handball and volleyball leagues – and now the message is getting across to every sector of society. In January, the Commission launched an art competition for children aged eight to 12 in the ‘City Centre’ mall to pass on the message to the public about the hazards of doping and how much doping is against the spirit of sport. Q1.08 QatarSport 9
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Page 36: the big interview Lamine Diack - co

JUSTINE EYES DOHA RETURN - Qatar Olympic Committee

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