The Shura Council Speaker H E Hassan bin Abdulla Al Ghanim and Aspire Zone Foundation CEO Mohammed Khalifa Al Suwaidi, during the National Sport Day event. Pic: Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula
The National Sport Day (NSD) celebration at Aspire Park was marked yesterday by the participation of Shura Council headed by Shura Speaker, H E Hassan bin Abdulla Al Ghanim where he emphasised that sports should be a lifestyle.
Speaking to The Peninsula, H E Al Ghanim said that playing sports will boost one’s immunity especially as the world is still battling the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You do sports, you (will) have strong health, you (will) have strong immunity, this is fighting COVID-19, fight COVID-19 with sports. Build strong immunity system in your body, this is very important.”
He also said that they are encouraging the young generation and families to make sports as a lifestyle. “Every family should ask their children, (even the) whole family to do sports, because this is (a) lifestyle,” he explained.
The Speaker of Shura Council also noted that more people are participating in this year’s activities compared to last year, and there is a growing number of individuals doing sports.
The Speaker of Shura Counci also disclosed that this is also because the government lifted some of COVID-19 restrictions.
Commenting on the activities that Aspire Zone Foundation (AZF) had prepared for the NSD, he said that Aspire is one the prominent parks in Doha. “Aspire is one of the very important health project in the Middle East, one the most important project for health. It’s very beautiful and everyday we come here and exercise, every year, more people are participating in the Sport Day, it’s very good, we encourage people and families to do sports. Sports is health,” he said.
Around 30 members from the Shura Council participated during yesterday’s activities in Aspire Park. Along with some of the staff from AZF headed by CEO Mohammed Khalifa Al Suwaidi, they started with a warm-up session followed by a staff walk around Aspire Lake where three training stations are placed. For each station, a 5-minute exercise was done led by a fitness instructor. Spinning and Volleyball are also among the activities they conducted.
For his part, AZF CEO, Mohammed Khalifa Al Suwaidi termed the Sport Day as a “very important event for the whole community in Qatar.”
Due to restrictions, he revealed that activities are not in full capacity where they have over 50 different entities participating, for this year alone, it was limited to 20. He also thanked the government authorities that they have allowed to conduct sports activities with certain restrictions including wearing mask and keeping social distance.
On the participation of the Shura Council, Al Suwaidi said: “We are lucky that they chose to conduct their activity within our Aspire Park, and this is the first-elected Shura Council in Qatar so we are proud to take their activities within Aspire and I think they are in a good shape, and good health.”
The governmental restriction has also forced people to change behaviour in several ways including exercising. With this, we asked the CEO how COVID-19 played a major role especially on doing physical activities, he said that he see it from a “positive perspective.”
“I think that COVID-19 changed the habit of people which encouraged them to do more outdoor activities because they are maintaining the social distance and that gives us an extra advantage. You see a lot of people during COVID-19 are practicing sports – running, jogging, any other activities. So I see it from positive perspective not from negative perspective,” Al Suwaidi explained.
