Current and aspiring Pacific Islands athletes must use the opportunities that ONOC’s roadmap to BRISBANE 2032 will offer in the next ten years.
Speaking at the start or Day One of the roadmap on Saturday, 23 July 2022 exactly ten years out from the opening of the BRISBANE 2032 Olympic Games, Karo Lelai, Chair of the ONOC Athletes’ Commission congratulated ONOC and all sports stakeholders from Oceania for their ‘far-sightedness and leadership to develop such a long-term and useful programme’.
Lelai, who spoke on behalf of all athletes of Oceania said, ‘This Programme will help find the next generation of athletes across the Priority Sports for our respective National Olympic Committees’.
Lelai said, “We will re-ignite the true potential of our youth through strong and vibrant junior development programmes with high retention rates to sustain our high-performance strategy.
“A long-term athlete development approach will ensure that the National Sports Federations [NFs] can develop the athlete holistically with support towards their education and career development, while developing their athletic ability”.
Lelai urged all Sports Administrators, Coaches, Technical Officials and National Sports Federation Leaders ‘to work diligently, with urgency, to enhance programs for talent development, while supporting the established athletes to work towards producing the aspirational goals for this Initiative.
“National Sports Federations and National Paralympic Committees will need to be properly resourced and function effectively to undertake these heightened programmes and deliver the desired outcomes.”
Furthermore, Lelai said, ‘The Athletes, and the yet to be identified talent, of the Pacific Islands will be forever grateful to all the strategic and programme partners who come on board and support this undertaking’.
Speaking directly to leadership and members of the Oceania National Olympic Committees (ONOC) and its partners, Lelai said, “You will be very proud and satisfied that you have helped produce new benchmark of performances for the Pacific Islands, while developing the new generation of Regional and National Sports Leaders, who will take up leadership roles in international sport in the lead up to and after the Brisbane Games”.
The ONOC roadmap to BRISBANE 2032 is visioned to be the first-ever ‘islands-sensitive’ long-term athlete and entourage development plan to increase by up to 500 percent, the medal prospects of ‘small’ Pacific Island nations of Oceania.
SOURCE: ONOC MEDIA/PACNEWS
