The Bahrain Olympic Committee (BOC) has announced a new set of initiatives for 2018 as well as its running activities in an attempt to promote sports within the Bahrain community.
The highlights of the press conference, was the unveiling of five new sports projects presented by the committee for the first time this year that target citizens and expats of all ages.
These sets of initiatives were announced by Supreme Council for Youth and Sports assistant general secretary and Bahrain Olympic Committee (BOC) general secretary Abdulrahman Askar.
Kicking off the initiatives programme is the region’s first-ever Bahrain International Futsal Challenge, to be held on the final week of March with 300 players to play in a match for a continuous 60 hours in bid to promote tourism in Bahrain and break the present Guinness World Record.
Bahrain will also become the first nation in the Middle East to organize a dedicated Baby Games in early April.
The event will feature five different sports – athletics, gymnastics, football, basketball and weightlifting, and targets 2 to 4 years children in an attempt to create an awareness among youngsters to practice sports exercises, and promote the Olympic principles and values at a young age.
Another initiative is the Sports Talents Programme, which aims to discover extremely skillful young athletes, who could become the heroes of Bahrain in the future.
BOC announced that the first stage of the programme will commence on March 4 when online registration gets underway before selecting the most talented athletes for the second stage of the programme.
Bahrain is also bringing the first of its kind Olympic Museum as one of the most anticipating ideas aimed to document the entire sporting history for the Kingdom of Bahrain, in addition to empowering all segments of the society to be part of the Olympic movement.
The fifth initiative will be the Olympic Park, due to be ready by December this year, to be located at Al Areen Wildlife Park and Reserve in Sakhir.
This project will be built to honor athletes with special sporting records, such as gold medals, as a tree for each athlete with exceptional achievement, either regional or internationally, will be implanted at the venue.
Askar also announced a string of activities organized by BOC on annual basis and have significantly drawn the community’s attention.
Some of the regularly-organised events include the National Sports Day, to be held this year on February 13 and feature sports and entertaining programmes organized across Bahrain’s four governorates.
BOC is also bringing the HH Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Scientific Research Award in the field of sports, with the awards ceremony set to take place open March 13.
The fifth edition of the School Mini Olympics have also been approved this year and will be see approximately 3,500 students from government and private schools competing in 20 sports between March 8 to 22.
Other events include a special night ceremony to honor Bahraini ex-athletes have been scheduled for April 17, the First International Physical Literacy Conference from April 22 to 24, the Olympic Day on June 22, in addition to taking part at the Jakarta Asian Games and the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, to be held this summer.

Source: BNA