Albanian athletes, and not only them, who represented Albania with dignity at the “Paris 2024” Olympic Games, among whom Chermen Valiev and Islam Dudaev, the first two Olympic medal winners for our country, were honored in a special ceremony by Prime Minister Edi Rama in the Map Room at the Prime Minister’s Office.

It is a special pleasure that today we are here for this very special ceremony to honor two representatives of our Olympic team who brought Albania its first two Olympic medals in its history. But I want to take this opportunity to say a few words about the journey that led us here because these medals did not fall from the sky. They are the result of a new path of transformations that have begun to support sports, thanks to the opportunity created for the government with the election of Fidel Ylli as head of the Albanian Olympic Committee. He has given us an extraordinarily passionate and persistent partner who has finally turned the relationship between the government and the Albanian Olympic Committee into a strategic one, serving a great common goal.

I brought here instead of a speech a decision of the Albanian Government dating back to December 2021, based on the sports law of 2017, where the clear goal was to take support for athletes to another level and create a much more favorable environment for all those who want to develop their talent in sports and have the opportunity to give Albania great satisfaction on the international stage. Here, I want to connect this with the fact that today we are honoring two extraordinary athletes who were not born in Albania, who did not start their sports careers in Albania, but who chose Albania to continue practicing their passion and aiming for the highest peaks in the world in their discipline. This is extremely important because Albania, once a country abandoned by its children because it could not even guarantee them food and lost potential that turned into gold medals for neighboring countries, has now become a country that can adopt children coming from other countries.

Naturally, if it were the Albania of yesterday, no one would come here seeking to be adopted by this country and to represent this country. But today, there is more than one reason to come, especially when it comes to individual Olympic sports, where I can confidently say, based on facts, not opinions, that Albania has managed to create a support framework that is among the safest and most attractive in our entire region and beyond. This is because naturally, other large and developed countries excel in many disciplines, and they don’t necessarily shine in certain sports with smaller audiences.

In this way, we have managed to give all those who sweat more than anyone else in the sports arena not only the opportunity to train in optimal conditions but also a sustainable perspective in their lives after their sports careers.

Today, Albania offers athletes and those who want to climb higher and are willing to sacrifice more, conditions that they have never had before. On the other hand, I brought here with Fidel’s help this stack of papers with information for all those who, as we well know, every time Albania has a success, there is always the luck of never lacking garlic to ward off the evil eye. Immediately, some Albanians come out who have something negative to say. So, in one sense, this is a blessing. But in another sense, the issue of this garlic needs to be addressed because it has to do with information. The throwing up of the garlic was that we shouldn’t rejoice over these medals because these weren’t our medals. These weren’t Albania’s medals; these weren’t the result of hard work and collaboration of all forces to succeed. These were medals that came to us thanks to two boys who came from afar, who somehow found themselves here in Albania, caught the Olympic team bus on the road, went to France with the Olympic team, fought with some others, and won the medal.

Here are Albania’s medals in various championships, from European championships to Mediterranean championships, Balkan championships, and various international tournaments, from 2021 to 2024. In these three years, Albania has won 538 medals.

Naturally, these are medals, I repeat, of different levels, but in all cases, they are medals where Albanians of all ages – not just adults, but also young people, and I will say a few words about the younger generations – have competed with others. They have competed here in the small Balkans, competed more broadly in Europe, competed in various international tournaments, and brought home 538 medals. These are medals of a sports movement that has been set in motion in Albania. I am extremely pleased to say that if you look at the weightlifting medals, the Weightlifting Federation, which works extraordinarily hard, is barely noticed and then forgotten out of ignorance and sometimes deliberately because it has brought Albania a considerable number of medals in recent years. In 2024 alone, the Weightlifting Federation has brought Albania 5 gold medals in European championships, in the European championship for men and women, for young men and women – 5 gold medals, just this year. It has brought 6 silver medals, in the European championship with the participation of all European countries for young men and women. And it has also brought a bronze medal, so in total, there are 12 medals this year. And here, I have 2023, 2022, 2021, but I won’t tire you with these. I just want to say that these medals are the first swallows of a history that will bring more medals.

Of course, we are neither a superpower in sports nor a power to be held accountable for coming home with loads of medals from the Olympics, but we are a country that, for 23 years until we came to power, had stopped physical education. For 23 years, no physical education was done in this country.

All the physical education teachers were left on the streets, and all the sports disciplines were practiced only by the extraordinary passion of people who wanted to keep sports alive. A country where the number of gyms was as few as the fingers on two hands throughout Albania, not just in Tirana. Meanwhile, today, on a monthly basis, gyms continue to open, with hundreds across Albania, where today we have over 10,000 children who train in an organized manner, who have coaches behind them, sports doctors behind them, all the necessary analysis and files, and they are followed by the Olympic Committee in volleyball and basketball, men and women.

We will never win the world championship or the gold medal in basketball, maybe we will never see in our lifetime a Gaz Chacchin with a different name, maybe! But this movement is undoubtedly one that will bring satisfaction even in these sports where in the past, we managed to make sports fans happy even in the highest-level European competitions.

Likewise, today we have wrestlers with Olympic medals, but I am absolutely convinced that they will bring with them many others. Inspiration and motivation is a well-proven history where others are inspired when they see heroes from their country, who for a day become national heroes, talked about by the whole country – this cannot be replaced by anything.

Today, if Greece still has athletes competing in the Olympics or competing at high levels in weightlifting, it is thanks to the first swallows that were Albanians. Luan Shabani, when he brought Greece the gold medal, no one said he wasn’t one of theirs. On the contrary, they asked him to even change his name to sound Greek.

We wish these two boys to bring us more medals. Here they are, equal citizens of the Republic of Albania, just like those born in the Republic of Albania.

And of course, no one can stop us from being very proud of their medals. But there are many medals in boxing, many medals in other international tournaments in other sports, which I won’t elaborate on, but I’ll just say this: to build a sports movement that manages to reach levels where it can compete with dignity – because Luiza Gega didn’t bring home a medal this time, but she was there. And if we have more athletes tomorrow, who bring home as much as Luiza did this time, which for Luiza is not what she has accustomed us to, this will be a great thing for Albania because the whole planet is there. And for Albania to be in the top 8, in the top 16, or in the top 32, closest to the finals, is an absolutely accomplished mission.

Naturally, our garlic wanted us to beat Spain, to beat Croatia, to beat Italy, and come here with the European championship cup. And fortunately, I repeat, without the garlic, we might not have scored any points there. But today’s reality helps us see that we are on the right path. Step by step, we will build a sports system and create an Albanian sports world that will be dignified and will give children the opportunity to exercise their talent. Not all will become champions, not all will become athletes who compete, but the more children involved, the fewer will get lost in TikTok and all those other nonsense that create the idea that you can win a championship with those FIFA games, or whatever they are, while eating fries and gaining a kilo after every match.

Finally, I want to say that Fidel announced here the ambition for the next Olympic Games, where we aim to seek more. This is a legitimate desire, but it requires better support and organization. And on the other hand, what Fidel said about the federations, which are directly responsible for the potential we can bring home more medals, not just in the Olympics but also in other championships, is very important. I assure you that we will support Fidel’s plan with all our possibilities. Now, To finance a 100% Fidel plan, you would need the US budget, but still, I believe even Fidel himself cannot deny that a government like this for sports hasn’t had sports before and cannot find that at least you need to have a vision; we have that; you need to have a passion for sports, which we don’t lack, but even when we have a little dip, we have Fidel, who is like natural doping, so much natural doping that he made Ogerta much more attracted to sports than before and there is a need for support.

So, we believe that we have all this to make available to the federations, to make available to the athletes and to start supporting even the smallest ones who win these medals I counted here so that Elez can continue the worthy positive competition he has with Fidel, which goes back to the time when there was a fight over who was smarter, the wrestlers or the weightlifters? The more agile, more precise. Okay, these were what I had to say and now I want to ask both guys, and I would have very much liked for there to be three because in fact, the one who broke the ice first of the three did not get a medal this time, but to be clear together, from the three, as personal fans, I am yours because when you win, personal fans increase a lot, the thing is to have personal fans when you can’t win. And you, unfortunately, went and caught a fever just when you were supposed to win a medal, but it seems you were hexed by that great championship win because the garlic was still unprepared to defend itself.

Now that you have become a few of you, now the garlic is working tirelessly, so now it takes the bad from you and we are very proud to have you here with us and we are very pleased that you feel good with the Albanian jersey and we want that, not only to be an inspiration, but also to be engaged even further, so that more young people can benefit from your experience, to train them too. You have time for that, but to give you the perspective and we certainly welcome others from all over the world. Whoever wants to come here, we do not ask them to change their name, or to change the color of their skin, or to change anything else. Naturally, we are very pleased when they start learning the language as I learned that you have started to learn it too. It won’t be easy, but the language you know isn’t that easy either, so I believe you have some kind of training to learn Albanian faster than Italians, for example. So, with great pleasure, I invite both winners, Valevin and Dudajevin, or Cherman and Islam, to receive the medals of appreciation.

Now, I am not putting this on your neck because it’s heavier than this, but this has a considerable value. We always give these so that if the tax police come, you can show that it is original. Now this figure has a special merit because he has overwhelmed me with messages for both friends here and every time you came in front of me, Guga would catch me, “is it going to happen or not”. In fact, it was about all the rewards but to be clear here that we have nothing to hide from each other, there was a bit of a bottleneck in our bureaucratic channels because it seemed strange that these along with my friend had strange names and how we would evaluate them. We overcame this difficulty too.

Besides the rewards for all the high-level international results, which I repeat Albania is among the European countries that have truly dignified rewards, we have ensured and the perspective of all athletes at these levels who do not need to worry about what will happen the next day when they are no longer on the arena, when they will be ordinary citizens and when they will still need to continue to support themselves and their families because according to the results, they have ranks in the armed forces and their pension comes according to those ranks and actually even in retirement, they have rewards equal to generals, colonels, with ranks according to the results. And one more thing I want to add because it seems necessary, Germany is one of the great football kingdoms and it was not too long ago when there was in the national team a boy from Africa and his brother played with the African team and he was German, he had to be, was respected, just like all German footballers and that’s why when you sometimes hear those garlic people raising such issues, it is truly shameful that they speak the same language as me and with us, which is the Albanian language.

It is shameful that the Albanian language can be used for such jokes or for such mockery or for such barbaric insinuations that have no connection with the world we live in, with the civilization we belong to and with our Albanian tradition which is in the most natural way, the table, the home of these boys and anyone else like them who wants and will want to represent the Republic of Albania.

And before I let you go, I want to say that these rewards are not because we were emotional and came to make a show here, these are rewards written in the government decision I mentioned from 2021, based on the 2017 sports law, the 2021 decision was an improvement, with an increase in rewards, there were rewards before too and I am very proud to say that no athlete who has received a trophy of the levels provided by this legal framework has been left without being rewarded.

Everyone has received the reward according to the law and according to the government decision and everyone will receive it, while we will again review the framework to see the support for athletes who will be included in the next Olympic plan and I say this because repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly the opposite is propagated, while the facts are these. These athletes received what they deserved, which is written and is there written and will be applied to every other athlete and to them themselves if they continue to achieve these results and I have great confidence that they will repeat their results. So, we will need to increase the amount because we cannot tell you to leave this match because we cannot give you the reward, but on the contrary, we will guarantee the reward for every athlete. This is the space where all those who are involved in individual sports and who have talent, ambition, and the dream to reach the top can develop supported and convinced that step by step they will have not only the Olympic Committee but also the government and certainly, not only with that, but even more. Every adjustment of support is also a result of the growth of the economy, of the increase in revenues that we have annually because our goal is to make this economic growth more tangible for everyone year after year and certainly from this economic growth, from this increase in revenues, the athletes who honor us globally are those who deserve not only applause but also this increasing financial support.

Thank you very much everyone!