First World Inter-School Championship - Dubai
Info: www.interschool.world Camera & Editing: www.promotime.be - Maarten Goedemé First World Inter-School Championship in Dubai - 25-29 November 2015 Script: It was all about the International Rope Skipping Federation, especially the Asian Federation, mr. Harpal Singh. They have always been insisting me to take up rope skipping for UAE. However if I need to launch something, because I am basically a marketing guy. You need to have something really solid and strong wherein you can cash on. Then all of a sudden mr. Harpal came up with an idea. And it was advised by some more people – what about having a world inter-school rope skipping championship. So, most important what hit me was the inter-school coming at a world level. Because to my knowledge none of the sports in any country goes beyond nationals if I speak about inter-school. So there is a good amount of students in the school who do not get this platform to come onto the world level. I have been in the fitness industry for the last 24-25 years now but this idea was a little too good for me to say no. And that’s how I started moving into it. My name is Kaustav Verma and I am from Delhi. I like rope skipping, I want to do freestyle and double dutch and more things. I am ready for the competition. Hey, how are you doing? I am fine, thank you. What’s your name? Suhail. Where are you from? I am basically from UAE. How is the competition? It’s something new for me. It’s like a new experience. I can meet different people from different countries like China, Belgium, … Okay, what about you? How was your experience here? It was really good. Meeting people from other countries, you actually integrate the way they do it and we do it. So it’s actually the first time, so you learn more. I practiced only for two days and I came here. It was pretty good. My expectations were that we would be having roughly a couple of countries coming here. But I landed up with 9 countries participating, flying from their countries coming here to an alien nation for rope skipping. So that was number one. Number two most important thing which I am still not able to digest is that we had 111 skippers from UAE. I would believe this is fabulous. We are here in Dubai and I really like this competition. We are having a lot of fun. It is a very well managed competition and we are very happy here. They are all so caring. Rope skipping is a new sport in Pakistan. And we are very happy to be the trendsetters in Pakistan. Being a jumper in Pakistan is very cool. Because it’s a very rare sport, people are not really into it. So when they see that you are a skipper they find it very cool. So it’s kind of awesome and I hope that we are going more to competitions and represent our country. The initial breakthrough, the most important breakthrough was hosting this event at the venue where it was. The Nab Al Sheba sports arena is His Highness Sheikh Hamdan ,the Crown Prince of UAE, Dubai, he owns this private sportscomplex. I have managed to get into the office and more importantly, convinced them that this is the sport they need to support. Once that was done, which took me more than 4 months, things started to become easier. I got offers for sponsorship from various companies, hotels, restaurants, I just said - thank you. It’s my first time that I am coming to an international rope skipping competition. There are so many clubs these days in Iran, doing rope skipping and the students, judges and coaches are improving day by day. I am really happy to be a rope skipper and to be in touch with other rope skippers, coaches and the rope skipping community. I would like to thank my host, my organizing team, they are doing wonderful job. Managing the tournament and making it a big success. Skippers are enjoying, so in the coming days I hope the event will grow much bigger. We are looking forward to you all joining us in the coming World Inter-School Rope Skipping Championship. Thank you. I am sure this will catch fire when we have the next tournament and I am looking easily around 300-400 skippers in the next 6 to 8 months. And when we have more tournaments locally, that’s when we start building up our team which can go and compete at an international level. I don’t see myself strong enough for the World Rope Skipping Championship in Sweden. However, if we are ready by next year July I am sure we are able to make it. Let’s see what God has thought for us.
