Sports, health initiative attracts ‘hundreds of participants’

AMMAN — Hundreds of participants have joined the Jordan Olympic Committee-supported Five Rings Challenge, resulting in plans to turn it into a long-term project, a statement from the JOC media service said Tuesday.

The initiative, which encourages the Kingdom’s youth to embrace sports and healthy activity, is held every Saturday morning at Al Hussein Park and invites participants between the ages of 18-30 to attend and discover sports in new and fun ways, according to the media service.

Developed by a group of volunteers in the JOC’s Knowledge, Training and Education Department, “the challenge sees the volunteers engage with other young men and women to learn, play and have fun with sport during a two hour session,” the statement said.

Narin Hajtass, the department’s manager, said that to date more than 350 young people have participated, adding that “it is a new approach to promoting sport and healthy activity among this important age group and follows the lead from the Association of National Olympic Committees [which] wants to create a new strategy to engage with the youth”. 

Hajtass also emphasised the benefits of the programme being run by volunteers, saying that it “encourages volunteerism as well as positioning sports as fun and social” while young people are simultaneously benefiting and enjoying themselves because they are not being taught by people with a professional sporting background.

The programme ties directly to the JOC’s vision of sports as playing a key role in the lives of all Jordanians, the JOC official said.

According to the official website, the five challenges test both mental and physical agility over two hours and consist of: warm up exercises, football, basketball, volleyball and Olympic values. 

Participants are divided into four groups who spend 20 minutes on each challenge before moving onto the next one.