HE Major General Dahlan Jumaan Al Hamad, IAAF vice-president and president of both the Qatari and Asian federations, expressed great confidence that athletics would move into a new phase and expand considerably at grassroots level. Speaking after the IAAF’s meeting with the IOC in Beijing yesterday, Al Hamad said the line-up produced by the recent elections in Beijing offered many signs that the future would be strong for athletics, especially since the strong awareness spreading through the sport’s family would serve it well in the coming period.
Al Hamad said the world’s federations had elected a new council for athletics made up of a group capable of developing the sport at every sporting, public and marketing level, noting that many other sports were now developing and competing, and that athletics needed to remain, as always, strong in every administrative and public detail. He stressed that, as elected vice-president of athletics, he was committed to keeping his promise to the federations to carry out the work programme he had set out – giving greater attention to the sport, developing its personnel at every level, and producing generations capable of honouring Asia and the rest of the continents, since the grassroots is the foundation and must be sound enough to achieve the success required.
Major General Al Hamad, who met Germany’s Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, and received his congratulations along with those of the IAAF Council, said athletics would remain number one in the future, especially since everyone was now watching it closely following claims about doping problems within it – claims he said were untrue – and that the council’s main goal would be to bring out the sport’s true face.
Major General Dahlan Al Hamad stressed the need for elected president Lord Sebastian Coe to receive full support in his current phase as IAAF president, especially since he was a product of athletics who had given it so much on the technical side and would give it even more administratively, reiterating his full support for the president, the implementation of his programmes, and commitment to all his development plans.
Interview with AFP
In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Major General Dahlan Al Hamad said athletics had entered a new era with the election of Britain’s Sebastian Coe as its new president, succeeding Senegal’s Lamine Diack.
Coe defeated Ukraine’s Sergey Bubka, polling 115 votes to his rival’s 92.
Major General Dahlan, re-elected vice-president for a third term, said: “Today we have entered a new era at the IAAF, in which we will work to do our utmost to improve the image of our beloved sport. It is the right time to move forward, and we must focus all our energy on reaching our goal.”
Al Hamad continued: “As a senior official at the IAAF, I pledge to give my full support to the new president and to commit to his agenda. I also pledge to support his plans to promote and develop athletics in order to strengthen its global standing.” He explained: “Given the current situation, with strong competition from more popular traditional sports and rising sports, athletics must find the ways needed to defend its place in the world of sport and put forward innovative initiatives to reinforce its current standing as the most popular sport at the Olympic Games. The time has come to move forward, and we must focus all our energy on investing in the sport’s future.”
Major General Al Hamad concluded his remarks by saying: “I believe we must focus heavily on youth programmes in order to develop the sport’s grassroots base. I pledge to devote my efforts to developing and implementing innovative ideas that allow us to reach a wider audience of young people and involve them in our sport.”
It is worth noting that the members elected today will have the opportunity to serve athletics until the next IAAF elections in
