LAHORE – Pakistan’s Aisamul Qureshi and India’s Rohan Bopanna have found their names in list of final nominees for the 2010 Willi Daume World Fair Play Trophy.
The awards to be organised by AIPS will be presented at a gala ceremony in Olympic City Lausanne’s Beau-Rivage Palace Hotel on January 27. AIPS as a founding member of the Committee for International fair Play (CIFP) will organise the 2010 World Fair Play Awards with the support of the World Lottery Association and European Lottery Sport as major partners.
CIFP was founded in Paris on December 5, 1963 by representatives of AIPS, UNESCO, the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE), and the international basketball, football, rugby and wrestling federations. The committee’s prime aim was, (and still is) to support and promote fairness and equal opportunity and to formally pay tribute to those men and women, children and adolescents and sports-related organisations throughout the world who have exhibited Fair Play on the sporting field or throughout their careers, or who have conducted an activity promoting Fair Play.
Two tennis players from Pakistan and India, Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi and Rohan Bopanna, have been doubles partners and best friends since 2003 despite their countries’ clear differences. Together with their technical supplier Lotto Sport Italia the players are making a statement by wearing t-shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with a message for not only their home countries, but the whole world: “Stop War. Start Tennis.”
“Over the passage of time, we’ve seen a bigger picture apart from tennis, and it’s about changing people’s views. If we can change even one person’s view, we’ll take it as a positive,” the duo says.
Neither player is active politically, but both realize that the better they do together, the more acceptable the idea becomes of their two nations being neighbours without bloodshed.
