On May 23, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev held a meeting via videoconference on the steps to promote sports and train athletes, the press office of the President of Uzbekistan reports.
Uzbekistan is taking active steps to promote a healthy lifestyle, particularly among young people. New sports facilities are being built, and the sports infrastructure is being developed;118 new sports facilities have been built and 110 existing sports facilities have been reconstructed over the past few years, and sporting events are held at various levels on a regular basis.
The President highlighted the need to pay special attention to training professional athletes among talented youth. In Uzbekistan, athletes are currently trained in 10 Olympic sports. The system of training athletes for international competitions is poorly organised.
To this end, sports competitions will be held on a regular basis in the mahallas throughout the country to reveal athletes with breakout potential. They will receive an opportunity to study at local sports schools free of charge.
The age at which children will be admitted to the Olympic sports schools will be reduced. Sports colleges are to be reorganised into training centres for Olympic and Paralympic athletes; they will admit children from the age of 11 (previously, they admitted children from the age of 14).
The training programme in sports medicine, nutrition education and psychology will be revised.
