By Sports Reporter/Doha

In a common discussion panel, the guest speakers expressed their gratitude and thanks to Aspire Academy and QAF for being behind this interesting initiative, and said they were very excited about what they witnessed in Qatar as perfect organization and professional atmosphere surrounded the participants during the two days Congress in such a state of the art academy.

Christopher Earle, Aspire Academy Director of Sports, thanked the participants and the speakers for making this initiative a big success and set an appointment for all to the 2nd edition on the same date next year. He also mentioned that all the lectures and workshops are to be available for all to learn from it and get back to it.

As the programme continued yesterday, the speakers and participants were full of praise about the event hosted by Aspire Academy in co-operation with Qatar Athletics Federation.

“It’s been a great experience and I really enjoyed it,” said John Godina, four-times World Champion in shot put and CEO of the “World Athletics Centre” and one of the popular speakers of the event. “It’s also great to meet old friends at this congress and to spread knowledge in another part of the world.” The US-American also stressed the importance of such events and the strive of coaches to further educate themselves. “The whole sport is constantly pushed forward by coaches who develop athletes, train and improve them. The better the coaches, the better the athletes, the better the sport!”

Qatar Middle Distance Coach Jama Aden, who has coached multiple world record holders as well as World and Olympic champions was also delighted about the output of the congress. “It’s a great thing for Aspire Academy to bring these people from all over the world together and opportunities like here are very important for the development of our Qatari coaches, because it’s the perfect chance to get useful inputs,” says Aden.

“I was really impressed by the high-level speakers and great topics that were discussed during these two days. I could exchange a lot of ideas with fellow coaches and there is a lot of useful information and inputs I can take home,” said Efthymios Kyprianou from Cyprus, who expressed perfectly what many participants felt at the end of the event.