The World Power Powerlifting webinar series reached 88 countries ©World Para Powerlifting

World Para Powerlifting has announced that its online webinar series reached nearly 500 people in 88 countries.

The webinars have been offered for free and were aimed at different stakeholders such as athletes, coaches, administrators, classifiers and technical officials.

Twenty sessions took place in all from September to November, with topics including gender equity, research trends, anti-doping, coaching tips and talent identification.

World Para Powerlifting's official partners Eleiko and the Dubai Club for People of Determination joined the series by presenting different sessions, with the webinars available in English, Spanish and Arabic.

Captions were also available in French, Russian and Portuguese.

Powerlifting has introduced initiatives to keep the sport going amid the COVID-19 pandemic ©Getty Images
Powerlifting has introduced initiatives to keep the sport going amid the COVID-19 pandemic ©Getty Images

"The webinar series was one of the most important initiatives hosted by World Para Powerlifting in 2020," said World Para Powerlifting performance and development manager Dillon Richardson.

"The COVID-19 pandemic posed a lot of challenges to our members, as it did to people all over the world, but we are really happy we could engage our community and continue to offer opportunities to develop our sport in different areas.

"We received very positive feedback about the webinar series and we will now look at the lessons learned this year to plan new virtual seminars in the future."

As well as the webinars, World Para Powerlifting also held its Online World Cup series amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw athletes compete virtually.