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AboveCongo’s athletics coach Victor Tamba hailed the performance of Franck Elemba at Rio 2016LeftBrazil’s rowing coach Marcello Varriale helped the team achieve record results on home watersIn Rio, Congo’s two-strong athletics delegation performed well above expectations, with sprinter Cecilia Bouele progressing through the preliminaries in the women’s 100m and Franck Elemba finishing fourth in the men’s shot put, one place away from what would have been Congo’s first-ever Olympic medal. These were proud results for Tamba, who was joined in “the Marvellous City” by another coach Raguib Faisal, whose athlete is the Djiboutian judoka and Olympic debutant Anass Houssein.“I’ve practised judo for 25 years, but because of the training I’ve done in Lausanne (Switzerland) where I attended the CISéL (Cycle International du Sport élite Lausanne), a programme offered by the Sport Academy Lausanne (SAL), my view on sport has changed a lot, because the training is much more rooted in sports science,” Faisal explains. “Now, I run training workshops for all kinds of sports across many different areas, such as physical and mental preparation.”This is important, because the purpose of the scholarship is not simply to pass on skills so that a coach can take an individual athlete’s training and performance to the next level in a particular sport. The goal is also to share knowledge and best practices with other coaches so that the scholar can I knew we’d created a project that would be useful over the long-term, and that would bring a legacy to Brazil.”Examples such as these highlight what can be achieved with a sound coaching structure in place, and through the three strands of its coaches’ programme, Olympic Solidarity continues to extend the concept of universal participation by giving more athletes access to a proper coaching system – especially within their own country – and consequently, a better chance of competing at the Games.And as NOCs around the world now plot their paths to the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 and Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, they can do so in the knowledge that help is at hand for their coaches at all levels, and with huge potential benefits.■implement these methods within their national sporting structures – potentially across a range of Olympic sports – thus raising the overall standard of coaching across the country.One course that prioritises this type of development is the International Coaching Enrichment Certificate Program (ICECP), hosted by the University of Delaware in partnership with Olympic Solidarity and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). In its eight years, the programme has hosted more than 200 coaches from 97 NOCs in 23 different sports – and every scholar is expected to return to their respective countries to serve as foundation builders for the next generation of coaches.A number of graduates were in Rio, notably Brazil’s rowing coach Marcello Varriale, who used his new-found knowledge to help the hosts achieve record finishing positions in the men’s and women’s lightweight double sculls. But the real impact of the scholarship, according to Varriale, will take place over the ensuing years.“Participating in the ICECP, and getting to know more than 30 coaches from other countries, was an incredible experience,” he reflects. “In Brazilian rowing we’ve never had a coaching development programme before. But after [the ICECP] finished, ‘AFTER [THE ICECP] FINISHED, I KNEW WE’D CREATED A PROJECT THAT WOULD BE USEFUL OVER THE LONG-TERM, AND THAT WOULD BRING A LEGACY TO BRAZIL’ MARCELLO VARRIALE, ROWING62 OLYMPIC REVIEW OLYMPIC SOLIDARITY