The ASPIRE family continues to grow

The partnership is the latest in a series of such agreements with major centres of sports education and is part of an ongoing process to align ASPIRE with the best and most innovative institutions in the field.

The Singapore Sports School is a specialised independent school providing an academic and training environment for talented young athletes conducive to creating future sporting stars, and shares APSIRE's philosophy of nurturing the whole athlete through providing the very best in sports, academic and social education. It was officially opened by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong on 2 April 2004.

It is hoped that this understanding will lead to a free exchange of ideas as well as offer the possibility of pupil, teacher and coaching exchanges.

In a busy period for ASPIRE, the Academy has also been able to develop a similar partnership with the High Performance Centre at Sant Cugat Del Valles, just outside Barcelona. A centre that deals with only the very top end of competition athletes, their specialist knowledge in the field of high human performance is a resource that can only serve to enhance ASPIRE's capabilities in training athletes of that calibre.

In selecting organisations to establish close working relationships with, ASPIRE looks not only for those outstanding in their field but also of impeccable repute. As such, a forthcoming agreement with a third institute, Institut National du Sport et de l'Education Physique (INSEP), a French Sports Ministry run sports academy and leader in technical and technological studies, makes perfect sense, too.

With a long tradition in pioneering developments in sports sciences, INSEP is considered one of the foremost institutes of its kind in Europe.

Dr Thomas Flock, Director General of ASPIRE, said: 'We are always looking for mutual benefits in our relationships and the aim is to have partners all over the world.

'You can not have all the experts concentrated in just one place and we have to stay in touch with all the major sporting centres of the world so that when something is going on in sports research and development, we have our foot in the door.

'We identified the Singapore Sports School in particular as they are the closest sports academy to our own, with the same vision, the same ideas and the same age groups.'

'The clearest benefits for the students come from visits, competitions and seeing how other people train - what they are doing; how committed they are; how they live their lives. Also, on the educational side, they benefit from exposure to other cultures.

'We are delighted to form such strong partnerships with other progressive sporting institutions who share our goal of producing the next generation of elite athletes. This can only help the students currently at ASPIRE and those we will welcome in the future.'