Commissions · Youth Commission · Youth Development Programme

One of the important points in the Olympic Committee Policy for this Olympiad (the 4 year period between one Olympic Games and another) is the Talent Identification Programme. Due to the size of the Maltese Islands, we cannot afford to loose potential talented athletes. On the other hand Malta should not adopt the Eastern European system of talent hunting, heavily in practice in the pain, once a young potential athlete is identified, this child, was made to forget everything but his becoming a champion. But rather we should follow an integrated Talent Identification Programme, which highlights the importance of sport as an important function in everyone’s daily routine.

Sport is a way of life that affects and influences the way we live. As important as it is for us it is even more important for children. Children need to and should participate in sporting activities from a young age to learn and improve their skills and most importantly to have fun. It also allows them to interact with other children, enhancing their social skills, and helping them to develop their character. Sport is a route to well being.

Most children are encouraged to take active part in numerous activities made available either through the Sport Federations, the schools, Skola Sport, and the Youth Sports Fest. Today’s children are the prospective Top Athletes to represent our Country. They will represent Malta in the future.

The Malta Olympic Committee is launching a Talent Identification program, which involves three stages. The aims of this programme are to discover a number of promising talented youths who are not aware of their capabilities and who need to be identified and helped to develop their talent in an appropriate sporting discipline suitable to their talent. The first stage is a general census; here the Youth Commission in collaboration with the Education Division in the Ministry of Education will be testing school children between the age of 13 and 16 on their physical condition and aptitude for sports. This will follow Modern European Guidelines, which involves various simple tests. Once assessed, they will be given all assistance and encouragement to take up a recommended sport discipline that suits their particular body structure best.

The second stage will be to identify from the data collected, children who are very promising, these account to around 10% of all those tested. These children would be invited to undergo further detailed tests. The Olympic Committee will encourage the National Federations to gear up for this sector of training. This would then have prepared the sound basis to start with the famous ‘Sport Schools’ where top promising athletes could be followed and prepared for high standard competition, this will lead to the third stage of the programme.

Accordingly after being tested each child will be given information on how they can become involved in the various sports. No child is told or given the impression that they cannot participate. Rather, they will be encouraged to be involved in sport at some level. All children can and should play sport, this is in line with one of the principal objectives of the Olympic Movement; that is, to help the youth of the world and to offer young, promising athletes, symbols of the future, the possibility to progress to elite sporting levels.

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