Dubai: The incoming board of directors of the UAE Athletics Association (UAE AA) will be targeting a new crop of distance runners who will be capable of successfully representing the country at the topmost levels — starting off with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Ahmad Al Kamali was re-elected for a record third term to head the UAE AA earlier this month, and the first meeting of the new board of directors was held at the General Authority of Youth and Sports Welfare (GAYSW) last Sunday in the presence of Ebrahim Abdul Malek, General Secretary of GAYSW.

Al Kamali and his new board of directors’ term that will last till October 10, 2020, unanimously pressed home the need to develop a core group of mid and long distance runners capable of peaking at the international stage by the 2020 Olympic Games in Japan.

“We have picked up 14 runners in the junior and senior categories who will embark on a 100-day high-altitude training camp in Morocco later this month,” Al Kamali told Gulf News after Sunday’s meeting.

“The good thing is that the sports bodies in the UAE are firmly backing us to bring in the results, and we are aware from past experiences that there are no short cuts in achieving results. With this in mind we have cleared the way for this special high-altitude camp for this core group of runners starting with the 800 metres all the way up to 10,000 metre athletes,” he added.

Spear-heading the programme will be former Moroccan Olympic champion Saeed Aouita, who will be personally supervising the training programme with the assistance of three specialised coaches. “This core group does not include our star athletes [Alia Mohammad Saeed and Behthem Desalegn] as the Competitions Committee has approved a separate training programme for them,” Al Kamali related.

Besides allocating new portfolios to fresh members in the UAE AA board, the meeting also ruled on several other issues — including people who will need to attend high-profile meetings in the near future. Al Marmari will represent the UAE AA at the Asian Olympic Council meeting scheduled to be held in Doha, Qatar from October 25-28. The UAE AA vice president will also attend the IAAF Congress to be held in Monaco from December 29 till January 3, 2017.

Lord Sebastian Coe, the President of the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), the world governing body for athletics, floated a spew of proposals at the Executive Board meeting last August pushing towards a “governance structure” for running athletics worldwide. The main aim behind this push was to try and restore the reputation, credibility and trust within athletics following a series of doping scandals that surfaced recently.

“As a council member of the IAAF, part of my responsibility lies in successfully pushing forward the reforms that our president has floated during the August 10 meeting. The IAAF has been conducting road shows on six continents and we are fully behind Lord Coe,” Al Kamali said.

 

 

The new board

Ahmad Al Kamali: President and Chairman of Technical and Competitions Committee

Nasser Al Marmari: Vice President and Chairman of Executive Board

Saleh Mohammad Hassan: General Secretary of UAE AA and GCC Athletics Federation

Rashid Al Ketbi: Assistant General Secretary

Sahar Al Obaid: Chairperson of Womens Committee and Marketing

Ali Khamis: National Teams’ Manager

Ali Bin Zayed: Financial Controller