Doha Goals take a free kick

DOHA: Lalit Modi has dropped out and, no, there is no Lionel Messi type of football sensation visiting this 2022 venue for the FIFA World Cup. But Blade Runner Oscar Pistorius will be doing the impossible — racing a royal Arabian horse to show off the strength of prosthetics and, of course, human endeavour, in the face of all odds.

The idea behind the Doha Goals Summit, which kicked off its three-day mission to make Sport a potent vehicle for social change, is similarly ambitious. But it is also well-meaning. Going by the looks of it, the turnout is as diverse as it is impressive, though where this will all lead is still a question being taken hesitantly by the organisers.  But, for a forum to be propelled by a taskforce of top policymakers, innovators, sport scientists, physicians, federation heads, academicians, athletes and corporate executives, the outcome is unlikely to be frugal.

 

For now though, amid some teething problems, a whole lot of aspirations, loads of promise and a plea to take forward the first ever non-competitive global sporting summit aimed at bridging the barriers among nations through sport, the meet has taken centre stage in this unlikely desert nation in the Middle East which has become a rising star in the world of sporting infrastructure. With 2000 guests, including 55 top-ranking speakers from all fields of sports, the summit is propelling four major goals — how can federations achieve more, how to encourage women in sports, how to tackle challenges ahead for children and youth and, last but not least, how to boost budgets and funding in sports worldwide. 

 

Though India’s big money maker and the brain behind the Indian Premiere League Lalit Modi, who was to be one of the main speakers in this conference, dropped out for reasons organisers say are unknown to them, sporting greats like Carl Lewis, Ian Thorpe, Mark Spitz and Pistorius are the face of the meet along with the bigwigs of the sporting industry, medicine, NGO and infrastructure developers. From Sebastian Coe, who would be talking about the future and legacy of the Olympics, to the WADA science director, who would deal with issues around the scourge of doping to author, to speaker and agent for social change Kevin Karoll extolling on the need for corporate funding, there is a lot happening at Doha in the next two days.

 

Coming just a day after the climate talks ended at the same venue, the royal family of Qatar which is heavily involved in the organisation of this inaugural summit, has tagged this meet as a “concept to build on.”  As event manager Richard Attias said, “Doha Goal is not a marketing action or a communication effort. It is an academic look at how sports can engineer social change and bridge gaping gaps in the world community.” Ace Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe, on the other hand, said “the summit should go a long way in making sports a social vehicle which makes it accessible to all.” For Shaikh Faisal, however, the real picture of the impact of this meet would be known at the end of the conclave when the future action, based on the discussions here, gets concretised.

That may well be fodder for sceptics here but for now the ball is rolling with a view to levelling sports with politics, measuring its impact in the way it engineers world change.

Source: Published in The Pioneer, December 11. 2012