SPORTS scientists from a York university who passed on their expertise to athletes and coaches in a four-day visit to Gambia have judged their trip a big success.

The York St John University experts have revealed they are hoping to return to the African country again next year, and build on an impressive start.

The Press reported earlier this year how four sports scientists from York St John University travelled out to Gambia in March to share their knowledge with around 40 coaches.

Michelle Jones, head of sports subject area, and coaches John Gray, Dean Armstrong and Tony Gummerson led a four-day conference concentrating on sports fitness, training methods and analysis along with preparation for competition and long-term development.

The conference was part of wider efforts to bring seven African countries, which make up ZANOCA (Zonal Association of National Olympic Committee of Africa) Zone II, to York for a pre-games 2012 camp.

It came about after talks between George Gomez, executive director of the Gambian National Olympic Committee and Ian Ashton, vice chair of the Moors and Coast tourism partnership, who is leading a coalition of organisations, including Active York, in negotiating a 2012 link with York.

If successful, athletes from Gambia, Senegal, Burkino Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea and Niger would use the city and its training facilities as they launch their bid for medals.

Jones said a lot had been learned from the visit.

“There’s no doubt they learned a lot about the types of knowledge and understanding about sports science that we were trying to teach,” she said. “Probably the biggest message and the biggest success was about them feeling empowered – that if they worked collectively together they had a lot of expertise within themselves.

“We met various people from the Gambian National Olympic Committee and the Ministry of Youth, along with the National Sports Council. They need to develop their own internal coaching structure. The ideal thing for us would be to go out there again and train some of their coaches to deliver in-house coaching education.”

Armstrong added: “When we got there it (facilities and equipment) was a lot better than we thought it would be. The main ethos we had during the conference was highlighting that facilities weren’t the limitation of them progressing and developing. It was the style of coaching and the way of coaching.

“I spent a lot of time, hands on, with the coaches. There was no limitation to the gratitude they showed us. Every single one of them were tuned in to what we were saying and were trying to take as much as possible from us.”

On the possibility of 2012 camps, Gray said the emphasis if the teams arrived in York would not be on training but support.

He said: “What we are hoping is that we are a friendly face to support the athletes and coaches with team building and acclimatising. We can make that translation for them – for issues, for helping them find physios, sports therapy and team-building sessions. You are not looking for lab work, sports science, and that sort of thing. We are friendly faces in a strange country.”