Celebrating Qatar National Sport Day that falls on February 9, more than 4,000 employees of the Facility Management and Services (FMM) company spent an entire day indulging in different indoor and outdoor competitive sport activities.
A game of chess at the “Mini-Olympics”.
Dozens of participants, both male and female, competed in individual and team sports. The games officially started with a colourful opening ceremony, with the lighting of a torch.
Wearing their respective colours, the individual runners lined up to compete for medals in races. They competed in a mini marathon (1.8km), a 100-metre and a 200-metre sprint, and a relay race.
Those who could not take part in the races headed to more fun competitions such as sack race, spoon and lemon race for ladies, bread eating competition and the ring game. The indoor games included billiards, carom, table tennis and chess.
The sack race.
In team sports, different departments competed in football, volleyball and basketball. Football and volleyball matches stretched till late in the evening and gathered the maximum number of spectators.
“We are celebrating the National Sport Day of Qatar. It is may be after a week but as we are a 24/7 working company we couldn’t do it [on the 9th]. So we decided to celebrate it on the first available opportunity,” Navaf Sidhique, Employee Relations and Accommodation Manager, FMM told Community.
“There are a variety of activities and we have ensured that there is maximum participation from people. Even those who are not very sporty had an opportunity get involved in fun games like bread eating, spoon and lemon and sack racing,” said the manager.
FMM is a joint business venture between Qatar Airways and Ferrovial Services and was created in second half of 2013 to deliver facility management and maintenance services to Hamad International Airport.
The FMM employees regularly get involved in sports, competing internally in games such as football and basketball. The venues for the games are provided at Ezdan 38, a compound hired entirely for FMM employees and workers.
However, the “Mini-Olympics” was planned a month in advance, and interested people got enough time to create their teams and then practice with them, said Navaf.
He added that space constraints prevented them from including cricket in the event, but they were planning a big cricket tournament in future. That said, the most popular sport this year at FMM was football, “because everybody loves it.”
This year about 700 FMM employees competed in the tournament, about the same as last year. To their surprise, they discovered some great athletes in different competitions this year — people had been national champions in different competitions in their countries. One of the participants, a Spaniard, has been recognised internationally in swimming, cycling and long marathon, said Navaf.
As for the spectators, people came in great numbers to cheer the teams in different games. “We could see that they really loved the spirit of the players and were completely involved, cheering and motivating their favourite teams,” said the FMM Accommodation Manager.
He added, “It was so great that people have already started asking us when we are organising the next such event. They want it to happen more often and not just confined to one day and that is really an encouraging sign.
“Now we are planning to go for more and more sports and outdoor activities as more people can participate in them. Whereas if it is a stage event, only some of them get a chance to participate.”
The company has more than 17 different nationalities living in Ezdan 38. The main celebrations and festivals are on the occasions of Eid, Diwali, New Year and other regional celebrations. Next up, they are planning Ramadan and Eid celebrations, to be followed by Onam celebrations, which is a regional festival from Kerala, India.