Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, November 25, 2024: The third stage of the OCA Development Programme for Coaches and Referees kicked off in Kuala Lumpur on Monday morning.
The six-day camp is for coaches and refs from National Olympic Committees in Southeast Asia and East Asia and has attracted 111 participants from 19 NOCs.
The four sports in the programme – archery, badminton, swimming and table tennis – each held their own informal opening ceremony, with participants from archery, swimming and table tennis gathering in the Pearl Hotel and the badminton coaches and referees at the Badminton Association of Malaysia HQ.
The OCA’s Director of Development, Wissam Trkmani, addressed the coaches and technical officials in swimming.
“On behalf of the Olympic Council of Asia I would like to welcome you all to this development programme for coaches and referees,” he said.
“This programme is being run in cooperation with World Aquatics and we have invited some very experienced coaches to provide all the latest updates, trends and techniques.
“I encourage you all to engage and to share your knowledge and learn from each other.”
The swimming technical officials are being guided by Mrs. Daphne Bird from South Africa and the coaches by Mr. Haydn Belshaw of Australia.
The opening sessions of the four sports all focused on the OCA project “Guarding the Asian Games” with four themes: the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competition (PMC), Safeguarding, Anti-Doping and Olympic Values.
In the opening session for swimming technical officials, Daphne Bird introduced the structure of World Aquatics and pointed out that the President, Mr. Husain Al Musallam, is paying a lot of attention to the role of athletes and promoting the voice of the athletes in the running of the sport.
She also said that Asia would have a big part to play in the future of World Aquatics as the 22nd World Championships will be held in Singapore, along with the World Aquatics Congress, in 2025, and the 24thWorld Championships in Beijing in 2029.
The OCA Development Programme for Coaches and Referees in Southeast Asia and East Asia will run from November 25-30 and follows camps for West Asia in Kuwait and for Central Asia and South Asia in Uzbekistan in 2022. This third stage will complete the programme for the OCA’s five zones.
