Here's to our sports future

I am not quite the new kid on the block of Maltese sports. For better or worse, I have been orbiting in it for the last five decades. Many generations of sportsmen and women have confided their dreams and their frustrations to me. I have heard it all from them - about the sports facilities they crave for, the low investment in sports, the disappointment in seeing talent go to waste because of lack of enough international exposure.

Having listened for decades, today I wish to stand up and be counted: the White Rocks Sports and Leisure Village needs to built to put Maltese athletes on the same footing as their European counterparts. I lend my support to this project with a clear conscience and with conviction. I did not rush to make up my mind. Nor did I pay too much attention to what politicians and media pundits had to say. The facts were all that interested me. And the facts were convincing.

For all Maltese athletes, White Rocks Sports and Leisure Village is a dream come true. FaulknerBrowns, the architectural firm that will be designing the project, are well known in the sports world. Many of us have seen what they delivered around the world and we like it.

FaulkerBrowns have received over 125 awards, including ones from the International Olympic Committee and Association of Sports and Leisure Facilities. In 2005, they won Building Design's Architect of the Year Award in the Sport and Leisure category and, in the same year, the British Council for Offices Best Corporate Building.

So when, at the launch of the White Rocks Sports and Leisure Village, Neil Taylor of FaulknerBrowns said it was going to be "an attractive, coherent, economically and socially sustainable development" catering for 40 disciplines, I stood up and listened.

I discovered that White Rocks will include a rugby/multi-purpose stadium, a multi-purpose outdoor stadium, multi-purpose training pitches, tennis complex, beach sports facilities and a BMX outdoor track. In addition, it will also have a multi-purpose indoor facility in which 15 different sports disciplines could be practiced simultaneously - basketball, volleyball, fencing, gymnastics, squash, table tennis, table football, snooker, billiards, pool, handball and martial arts among many others.

But this is not all I discovered. White Rocks Sports and Leisure Village will have a Sports Science Centre to improve the performance of local and foreign athletes and monitor the recovery of injured sportsmen and women.

And the cherry on the cake is the House of Sport, which will meet the needs of the national sports organisations for office space, shared meeting rooms and conference facilities.

All these state-of-the art facilities will be available for use by local sport entities since as on completion all these facilities will be the property of the Maltese government.

On the other hand the running and maintenance costs of the same facilities will be carried by the investors at no expense for both the government and the national sports organisations.

As an organiser of various sports events in the past, I know from experience that the costliest item in the budget when organising a sport event is transport. With accommodation facilities in the midst of the sports venues, the transport problem will be drastically diminished. Besides the cost, athletes will feel more relaxed if staying in a hotel near the facilities as this will ease the tension that normally hits them whenever they have to wait for transport or are stuck on the road on their way to training and competition.

Having seen the facts, I am now convinced that White Rocks Sports and Leisure Village is going to be pivotal in the promotion of a national sports culture and in increasing access to sports events and programmes. This state-of-the art facility is necessary to accommodate the rising demands of Maltese sporting organisations for better facilities so that they can deliver better results.

In addition, this project will also be crucial for the better exploitation of the economic potential of sports tourism through the hosting of competitions, training camps and sport-related conferences. At the same time, local athletes will benefit greatly from the exchange of ideas and experiences during such events. Sports, like everything else in life, grows healthier through exchanges and synergies with others. Particularly for athletes from a small island like Malta.