Usain Bolt takes the baton at the Penn Relays (© Kirby Lee)
The Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association and the French Federation of Athletics joined forces this year to learn from one another. Their efforts to share information and best practices with one another are truly in the spirit of the World Plan, we hope you can learn from it as we have.
The Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association (JAAA) inked an agreement in Guadeloupe to enter into a partnership deal with the French Federation of Athletics (FAA), which will see the Jamaicans sharing their expertise and ideas with the regional French territories, while at the same time receiving assistance with competition management from their French colleagues. JAAA president Howard Aris and his French counterpart, Bernard Amsalem, signed the deal in June 2010.
This deal will be beneficial to both federations and will hopefully have a direct impact on the development of track and field in France's regional territories of Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guyana in particular.
The agreement will feature several bilateral seminars on techniques and a 4-day Caribbean youth camp. Howard Aris described the agreement as a step in the right direction and pointed out that it will also help Jamaica realise its push to develop other areas in the sport of track and field outside of sprinting.
The four-day camp is hoped to serve as an important first step towards preparations of budding regional talent for the 2016 Olympic Games to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Some of the Jamaica's top sprint coaches and instructors are expected to share their wealth of knowledge at the seminar, which will also involve top coaches from the European country.
This is a great example of how to two athletics organisations have teamed up in order to learn from one another and share their expertise in different areas. How has your organisation joined forces with another athletics association? If you want to share some of your own experiences please contact us at worldplan@iaaf.org with a short summary, and a member of our editorial team will contact you. Together, we can share in the spirit of the Athletics’ World Plan.