Jordan Times
Thursday, April 8, 1999
By Aleen Bannayan
AMMAN — Officials from the Arab Paralympics Federation (APF) Wednesday expressed their appreciation to Jordanian authorities for offering their support and hosting the 1st Arab Paralympics which will be held Sept. 9-20 following the 9th Pan-Arab Games.
The APF Vice-President Hasan Ben Ali and Secretary Hasan Suweidi made their comments after meeting HRH Prince Faisal, the president of the Higher Organising Committee (HOC) and HRH Prince Firas Ben Ra'd director of the Paralympics.
Prince Faisal underlined Jordan's support for holding the first Arab Paralympics in which 13 countries will participate: Bahrain, Tunisia, Sudan, Palestine, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Jordan.
The events on schedule are basketball, weightlifting, athletics, table tennis for the physically handicapped, athletics and target ball for the blind, athletics for the mentally handicapped and football for the hearing impaired.
The Paralympics is expected to cost around JD300,000 to prepare the Kingdom's 10 national teams for competition.
Prince Faisal recently expressed his satisfaction with the preparations for the Aug. 15-31 9th Pan-Arab Games and said he expected an overall successful event.
The Prince expressed hope that all Arab countries would take part in the event, urging Jordanian officials and athletes to exert all efforts to attain the best results and make the Games worthy of carrying the name Al Hussein Tournament in memory of King Hussein who passed away on Feb. 7 after a long battle with cancer.
Around 50 venues at schools and universities have been designated as competition and training sites while construction of various venues is on schedule and expected to be completed in June.
Those include the JD4 million multi-purpose indoor stadium with a 7,000-seat capacity, the Olympic-size swimming pool, and maintenance work on the track and field stadium at Al Hussein Youth City.
Minister of Youth and Sport Mohammad Kheir Mamsar this week set April 25 as the final day for submitting tenders to buy equipment for the Games since apart from gymnastics, no equipment has been ordered from abroad yet.
The Japanese and Chinese governments have expressed willingness to supply equipment as Jordan seeks to upgrade facilities with electronic timing machines and other requirements.
Over 4,000 athletes and officials are expected to converge for the last Arab Games of the century. For the first time the schedule will include 27 of 62 Olympic events (compared to 19 events in 20 sports at the 1997 Beirut Games).
With the recent mobilisation of efforts to make sure that work on construction and procurement of equipment moves at a faster pace the main pressing issue on the agenda of Al Hussein Tournament is the competitive level of the Kingdom's teams.
Officials at the Jordan Olympic Committee (JOC) expressed concern that a host of administrative and organisational issues seem to have overshadowed the lax attitude of some federations overseeing the training of athletes — a key priority as host country.
Officials do not want a repeat of the scenario of the 13th Asian Games in Bangkok in December, the last regional event Jordan took part, where Jordan only managed five medals, four by the taekwondo team. The rest of the athletes failed to even match their own national records.
The 8th Pan-Arab Games in Beirut witnessed the best Jordanian showing since the Pan-Arab Games were launched. Competing in 14 of the 20 events, Jordan finished 5th overall among 19 competing countries, taking a total of 40 medals, including 10 gold, 8 silver and 22 bronze medals.
Jordan's athletes gained more gold medals in Beirut than in all the past 7 Pan-Arab Games together in which they gained a total of 49 medals, including 7 gold, 16 silver, 26 bronze.
Nineteen countries are confirmed for the Amman Games: They are in addition to the host, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, Oman and Lebanon, Somalia, Bahrain, and the UAE.
The only Arab countries still not confirmed are Mauritania, Djibouti and the Comoros Islands.
Rehearsals for the opening programme have started and involve over 7,000 students from various schools.
A French expert who was in charge of opening and closing ceremonies during the 1998 World Cup has been contracted to provide expertise at a cost of JD250,000.
Jordan has had to bear a heavy financial burden because the Kingdom has had to prepare the Games in less than 20 months after the decision to move the Games back to 1999 instead of 2001 so as not to coincide with the Mediterranean Games.
The Games are estimated to cost around $30 million of which the government has paid $10 million and the JOC has provided $4 million.
So far, there has been no direct aid to help the Kingdom apart from $500,000 in sponsorship from the Council of Arab Sports Ministers while UAE TV announced that it will lend Jordan Television the necessary equipment to cover the event after it was estimated that JTV needed JD6 million to acquire its own equipment.
Around JD3.5 million was expected in revenue (including $1.5 million from TV coverage). Based on the promotion and marketing rights agreement with the Saudi firm RAF, Jordan will receive $1.5 million in addition to 70 per cent of any additional income.
Additional sponsorship was secured by exempting Jordan from the 50 per cent Arab Sports Federation margin of profit on promotion and television coverage amounting to $750,000.
Lebanon, which hosted the 8th Pan-Arab Games last summer, received $28 million from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to help in construction of sports facilities destroyed during the civil war.