Praslin ready to host Olympic Day activities |19 June 2009

Tomorrow night, starting at 7pm at the Baie Ste Anne Praslin community centre, there will be a judo competition.

Sunday will be a busy day at Grand Anse. The day will start with a fun run at 9am starting at the ex-YRTC at Amitié to the Grand Anse playing field where all the other sports activities will take place.

There will be women’s and men’s seven-a-side football, women’s and men’s two-a-side beach volleyball, women’s and men’s three-a-side basketball, ironman and ironwoman (canoeing, cycling, running and tyre race), tug-of-war (comprising nine competitors at least four women), Mini-Mahe power boat races, Laser, Optimist, canoe races (K1 and K2), canoe polo, a karate grading session and dominoes.

This Olympic Day activities are organised by the National Olympic Academy of Seychelles (NOAS), an arm of the Seychelles Olympic and Commonwealth Games Association (Socga) in collaboration in collaboration with the Seychelles Yachting Association, the Seychelles Judo Federation, the district administrations of Baie St Anne, Grand Anse and La Digue.

It was on January 1948 at the 42nd International Olympic committee (IOC) session in St Moritz, Switzerland, that the idea of an Olympic Day was approved. The celebration is used to commemorate the creation of the IOC on June 23, 1894 in Paris.

With the prime aim of encouraging all National Olympic Committees (NOCs) to commemorate and celebrate Olympic Day, the IOC Sport for All Commission launched the Olympic Day Run idea with the objective of encouraging the practice of involvement in sport by men, women and children from all parts of the world, regardless of athletic ability. The first Olympic Day Run was held in 1987, over a distance of 10 kilometres, with 45 participating NOCs.

G. G.