DOHA: The Qatar Boxing Federation (QBF) today will launch their 90-day countdown to the 2015 AIBA World Boxing Championships set to be held in Doha later this year.
This was said by QBF President Yousef Ali Al Kazim after the local organizing committee carried out detailed discussions with the AIBA family headed by its President Dr Wu Ching-Kuo Wu over the last three days.
More than 260 boxers representing some 70 countries will feature at the October 8-18 event set to take place at the state-of-the-art Ali Bin Hamad Al Attiyah Arena.
The event will be beamed to more than 60 countries around the world by live TV and social media feeds, Dr Wu said.
“The countdown starts this Saturday when we will have 90 days remaining to the start of the 2015 AIBA World Boxing Championships,” Al Kazim said in the presence of Dr Wu and Karim Bouzidi, the AIBA Executive Director.
“After this phase, there will be another milestone in our preparations when we start the 60-day countdown followed by a 30-day countdown. We will wind up with a special 10-day countdown to keep the interest in our event going ahead with full force,” Al Kazim said.
“We have divided our activity plans for all these countdown phases.
“During the 90-day mark, which begins on Saturday, we will have our marketing staff visit shopping malls over the next few weeks to promote the 2015 AIBA World Boxing Championships,” Al Kazim said.
“We will also be visiting schools across Qatar and take our message to our schoolkids. Furthermore, we have plans to go and visit the sports clubs in the country. We feel that will be a good way of reaching out to members of the sports clubs and inform them about our forthcoming event.
“During the 60-day phase of the countdown, we will continue visiting schools around the country. We will specially seek out the expatriate communities in Qatar and tell them about the event. The marketing team of ours also has plans to visit certain government ministries in Doha and make their employees aware of the key event set to take place in Qatar,” the QBF President explained.
“When we approach the 30-day phase, we will go with full force and target all the residents in Qatar - whether locals or expatriates - and take our message forward. During this phase we will make sure the message has reached all corners of the country,” Al Kazim said.
The QBF President said the 10-day countdown would be key to the entire promotional campaign.
“We know that the 10-countdown will be the most important phase in our promotional campaign. We will be approaching embassies in Doha. That will complete our target audiences for the campaign. We feel by then we would have taken the message to all people that we are ready.
“When the championship time comes around, we will be ready with our hotel accommodation for athletes and officials coming to Qatar. The transport aspect also would have reached full readiness. We are just waiting for the names of the boxers that will eventually qualify for this event,” he said.
Al Kazim said QBF and AIBA will continue to work closely during the next three months.
“We will continue to work closely with AIBA. We have had extensive discussions among ourselves as we move closer to the event. I take this opportunity to say we are glad that we’ve had this chance to host more than 40 AIBA officials over the last three or four days,” Al Kazim said.
Karim Bouzidi, Executive Director of AIBA, said: “I feel we are in good hands. You have a beautiful city in a beautiful country. For AIBA, this is a pleasing aspect about this championships.”
He added: “AIBA has selected Doha to launch our new educational programme called ‘Heads Up’. This programme - you can see the logo behind me - is now officially launched here.”
“We are concerned about the safety of our athletes. The ‘Heads Up’ campaign is a serious warning that you - the boxers - have to raise their heads to this new awareness campaign,” Bouzidi said. THE PENINSULA
