A love of swimming

Aabid Hammour of Sudan grew up loving to swim. 

“I found the answer for everything in swimming,” he said. “If I had a problem, I’d go to the swimming pool.”  

Hammour graduated from the ICECP in 2016. He’s now head coach of the Sudanese Olympic swim team and is in Paris for the 2024 Olympics, marking his second appearance at the Summer Games. The ICECP also led Hammour to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, Brazil, the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, and the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2018.  

“The ICECP experience changed my career,” Hammour said. “Before, I was a coach. Now, I’m a good coach because I understand the science behind the sport.” 

Hammour specializes in open-water swims in oceans and rivers. Sudan is home to the world’s longest-running river, the Nile. For his ICECP project, Hammour sought to make open-water swimming a sustainable community sport — and it caught on. 

“In 2018, we hosted the first African open-water swim competition in my country, and I was the coordinator for the competition,” Hammour said. “In 2022, I became the Africa Aquatics Open Water Championship competition manager, thanks to ICECP.”

Improving the world through sport

There are dozens of stories of ICECP graduates who’ve worked diligently in the face of adversity to advance sport in their countries. Many of them are grassroots coaches whose stories are often left untold.  

“Ninety percent of the programs implemented through ICECP are continuing today or have grown and expanded,” Robinson said. “That speaks volumes about our program and the participants making a significant difference.” 

World champion flyweight female boxer Ria Ramnarine of Trinidad and Tobago graduated from the program in 2015. She initially wanted to implement a project to identify elite talent to get into female boxing when she realized her country had a bigger problem.

“Her country had a high incidence of physical and sexual assault, so Ria wanted to teach self-defense and women’s empowerment through boxing,” Robinson said.

The program she put together through ICECP has spread across the Caribbean. 

“There’s never going to be a medal for a program like that,” Robinson said. “But when we look at using sport to empower young women and build their self-confidence, those stories are overlooked, and they’re the stories that make you believe in the human spirit.” 

The ICECP program includes a four-month online program, an interactive session at the Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, an apprenticeship where students interact with coaches in their sport, and several days on the UD campus during which participants work with the program’s international tutors in the development of their project plans.

Sudanese coach Gibreel Elamin built a rowing training center on the Nile to serve coaches and athletes in East Africa. He had his apprenticeship at Princeton University and developed a pivotal partnership that helped advance sport in Sudan.  

“Princeton was replacing rowing boats to train on the water, and Sudan needed shells, so they shipped them across the world,” recalled Robinson. “That makes me proud to be part of the sports community in the United States, and it humbles me what can be achieved through sport.” 

Tshering Choden, a women’s archery coach from Bhutan, sought to get young women involved in the sport, but it was cost prohibitive. Her invention solved that problem. 

“Tshering sliced shampoo bottles, and her innovation replaced the costly arm guard that was stopping kids from participating in the sport,” Robinson said. “These are coaches who don’t have the facilities or resources we have, and they overcome obstacles to implement these life-changing programs. It’s inspiring.” 

As the ICECP prepares to enter its 15th year, Robinson has seen the world through sport and realized there’s a lot of good out there. 

“Leading this program is such a collaborative effort across countries, sports, sport organizations and governments,” Robinson said. “We have a great support team at UD in Becca Usher, Erin Restucci, Tabitha Groh, Maria Poole and Connor Feeney. They do the work behind the scenes that make the program successful.”

“When I have a bad day, I turn to these stories, and they keep me going,” he added. “If they’re pushing like that, I need to push a little bit harder.”