04 Oct 2019
Doha, 4 October 2019. On Friday morning, Aspire Academy welcomed a high-ranking delegation from Spain led by Her Excellency Ms. Maria Jose Rienda, President of the High Council for Sport of Spain and Her Excellency Mrs. Belen Alfaro, Ambassador of Spain to Qatar. The visitors were taken on a guided tour and had the opportunity to meet with Aspire Academy Director General Ivan Bravo, who told them more about the Academy’s philosophy. Furthermore, they also had the possibility to find out more about Aspire’s Football Performance Center, a groundbreaking facility that benefits the entire football development in Qatar.
"We are impressed by this high performance center. It's a center that inspires, that helps to providing research that supports the development of sport. This evolution of Aspire Academy is not happening by accident, it’s the result of having people here that are really passionate about sports,” said Maria Jose Rienda, who is hoping for strengthening the ties in the future. “I hope we can establish a closer collaboration in the future, to have access to training and technologies that would help Spanish athletes to perform and recover better in order to achieve those desired medals and make their "Olympic Dreams" come true. We are here to search for solutions, assessing what kind of collaborations we might get pursue, and Aspire Academy, as an inspirational place for everybody in the world, really gives us the future vision that we need".
"There are many sports where we might be able to collaborate, and we need to define what sort of collaboration that might be. Everything that is related to biomechanics studies, or the subject of loads and recovery are very important. It is true that Football capitalizes a lot of our attention in Spain, but we have a total of 65 federations, and I would like to note that Qatar is in a strategic location regarding Tokyo 2020 and Spain is also in a strategic location for the Olympic Games that follow those, which is in Paris in 2024. I think this kind of bilateral collaboration is very important to keep growing in the future", Rienda added.