ITF

(continued from previous page) One of the important areas of activity for the development department is coach education. The ITF does not certify coaches but does encourage and help the ITF's developing member nations to become self-sufficient in coach education so that their own qualified tutors can use the ITF approved syllabi to deliver the courses. In 2012, 78 courses were organised by the ITF with 32 of them being funded by Olympic Solidarity. In addition, six regional coaches' conferences, including the European Coaches Symposium, were organised in 2012 across five continents, helping coaches keep up-to-date with the latest tennis coaching and sport science findings. More than 700 coaches attended the conferences, which are held biennially. Speakers at the conferences included: Tom Gullikson (USA), Larry Jurovich (CAN), Beni Linder (SUI), David Ramos (USA), Paul Dent (GBR), Jeff Coetzee (RSA), Gabriel Jaramillo (COL), Bernard Pestre (FRA), Louis Cayer (CAN), Mike Barrell (GBR), César Kist (BRA), Mark Kovacs (USA), Gustavo Luza (ARG), Craig Morris (AUS), Hayato Sakurai (JPN) and Max de Vylder (BEL). One of the main goals of the coaches education programme is to ensure that the latest coaching information is easily accessible by coaches in ITF member nations. With this in mind the ITF continues to make the most up-to-date technology available on tennisicoach.com. All of the keynote presentations from the regional coaches conferences are 20 DEVELOPMENT available on the Tennis iCoach website in order to allow coaches who were unable to attend the conferences to benefit from the expertise and knowledge of many of the world's leading experts in high performance player development. Finally in an Olympic year, it is only fitting to acknowledge the continued support the ITF and its member nations receive from Olympic Solidarity. OS is the part of the International Olympic Committee that distributes television income from the Olympic Games to National Olympic Committees for development. Since the reintroduction of tennis into the Olympic family at Seoul in 1988, the ITF has collaborated closely with OS on a variety of programmes designed to grow tennis around the world. Coach education and the ITF training centres are the main areas of activity and over the last four years 107 of the 281 coaches' courses organised by the ITF have been funded through Olympic Solidarity. In addition to grants for technical courses, OS has also provided Olympic scholarships for 11 coaches from 11 countries to undergo an intensive course of high-level training and study in Valencia, Spain. In 2012, Igor Shelyakin (UZB), Phong Quoc Tran (VIE), Kamran Khalil (PAK), Hani Nasser (EGY), Akbar Taheri (IRI), Alberto Martinez (DOM), Maria Elena Gittens (PAN), Oderaiza Soto (PUR), Kagiso M. Kelebeile (BOT), Guillermo Guerreño (PAR) and José Giraldo Martínez (CUB) all benefited from the OS scholarship programme.

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