Dubai: UAE Olympic champion Shaikh Ahmad Hasher Al Maktoum has hailed the country’s sports structure after initiating the first step towards achieving the nation’s ‘Olympic Dream’.

Shaikh Ahmad chaired the inaugural meeting of a panel of specialists formed under the aegis of the UAE National Olympic Committee (UAE NOC). The panel also includes former Moroccan track-and-field world-record holder Saeed Aouita and South Korean champion Jeong-ho Kim, among others.

The panel met and deliberated the course of action to be adopted by the UAE NOC’s ambitious project ‘UAE School Olympics’, which was launched two years ago with the aim of finding genuine grassroots talent in various sports in the country.

The meeting also deliberated ways and means to realise the UAE’s ‘Vision 2021’ laid down by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

Also attending the meeting were Minister of Health Abdul Rahman Al Owais, Ebrahim Abdul Malek, General Secretary, General Authority of Youth and Sports Welfare (GAYSW), Mohammad Al Kamali, General Secretary, UAE NOC, and UAE NOC board members Saeed Hareb and Obaid Al Shamsi.

“This meeting is the first step of many and, from now on, we all need to be ready and willing to put in all the hard work we can to achieve the dream laid down by our leaders,” Shaikh Ahmad, who won 2004 Olympic double-trap shooting gold, told Gulf News.

“If we are to strive towards this dream, we need to do some proper planning in the first place and make use of the expertise we have recruited to assist the development of our athletes in various sports,” Shaikh Ahmad added.

The second edition of the ‘UAE School Olympics’ concluded at the end of April, following which a total of 81 promising athletes representing all ten educational zones were chosen to attend a specialised three-week training camp in Italy next month. The shooters and fencers in the group will train at the Centre of Olympic Preparation in Rome, while the archery and athletics teams will camp at a similar centre in Formia along the Mediterranean coast of Lazio from August 3 to 24.

“This camp will be a fantastic opportunity for both our athletes and the specialists who will be supervising them. The athletes will get to know each other, while the specialists will be able to assess the potential of these athletes. This is the first step for us all,” Shaikh Ahmad said.

“We are here as a panel of experts in our own fields to ensure we have UAE athletes competing and winning on the international stage. The success will not be overnight but will take time. But once it gets going, we will take off and start expanding our activities, and only then can we hope to deliver on the promise of having Olympic champions in perhaps another eight to 10 years’ time,” Shaikh Ahmad said.