UIPM Organizes a Development Camp in Burkina Faso

Under the steady hand of UIPM Technical Committee member Pedro Petrushinski (GER), an intensive two-week sub-Sahara development camp was held in Burkina Faso.

The main goal of the exercise was to give athletes, coaches and officials from around the Africa region some preliminary training about UIPM rules and how to organize a competition with four events.

In the first week, 25 athletes aged between 7 and 25 from Burkina Faso attended a national training camp in Ouagadougou which involved daily swimming, shooting and running as well as an introduction to fencing. The week ended with a Biathle competition, after which the best six athletes from Burkina were selected for the second week’s international training camp.

Athletes from six nations - Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger and Togo - took part and many of them travelled by bus for as long as 30-35 hours to be involved.

The sessions were followed closely by the coaches, who asked questions throughout and by the end of the week were able to organized and correct errors in training by themselves.

The fortnight emphasised the challenges faced by countries that lack the infrastructure of nations in the developed world but with motivation like that shown by the participants in this camp, there are fantastic possibilities for development.

The closing Triathle competition was held over the same distances used in Batumi at the UIPM 2015 World Biathle/Triathle Championships. More than 30 representatives from government, military, police and TV followed the competition and afterwards a representative of the Ministry of Sport addressed the group and thanked UIPM for supporting the camp.

The competition ended with a medal presentation and a farewell party.