Qatar sports venue master plan revealed at ASPIRE4SPORT

Following a succession of reveals made at ASPIRE4SPORT, the Qatar Sports Venue Master Plan (QSVMP) was presented to the public for the first time during ASPIRE BUILD, the last of three forums held during the congress. Two years in the making, the plan audited 62 existing sports venues for usability and proposed 11 new ones, in addition to eight venues originally planned by the QOC. The plan was introduced by His Excellency Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Secretary General of the Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC), and presented by Abdul Rahman Al Malki, Director of Engineering at QOC. “Our focus since the beginning of this project has been legacy and ensuring that we avoid white elephants,’ said His Excellency Sheikh Saoud. “We have watched countries build large venues and struggle later with what to do with them; and our team has worked backwards, thinking first about how these venues can be of use in the future before planning their use during major sporting events.” The new venues planned are distributed over five zones around Lusail City, Qatar Foundation, Aspire Zone, Old Airport Area, and Qatar University. “We spent a lot of time meeting with these entities and their engineers to find out what their plans are and ensure that we were aligned,” said Al Malki, referring to major stadia and other sports facilities already in the plans of Qatar Foundation and Lusail City. “We’ve also mapped out a way – in collaboration with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs – to integrate all our sports venues with the transportation network that Qatar is preparing,” he added.