Moroccan athletes celebrate after clinching gold medal in the Women’s 4x100m final at the 18th Arab Athletics Championships in Doha, yesterday. RIGHT: Rashid Ahmed of Qatar competes in the triple jump final. The Qatari won a silver medal.
BY RIZWAN REHMAT
DOHA: Qatari athletes Rashid Ahmed and Mohammed Ebrahim picked up a silver each as the hosts added a couple of medals to its overall tally of six on the penultimate day of the 18th Arab Athletics Championships.
Qatar have managed two gold medals, three silvers and a bronze in the first three days of the championships.
The men’s medals tally is headed by Algeria (3 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze medals) followed by Qatar and Kuwait (2, 1 and 1 for a tally of 4).
Qatar’s Ahmed (16.40) finished behind Asim Neema (17.01) of Algeria in the men’s triple jump final while Bahrain’s Mohammed Yusuf (16.17) settled with a bronze medal at Suheim Bin Hamad Stadium.
In the javelin final, Qatar’s Ebrahim (71.05) ended the competition a notch below gold medallist Ehad Abdulrehman (79.17) of Egypt.
Abdullah Adnan of Kuwait (68.16) finished with a bronze medal.
Egypt’s Abdulrehman broke his own record of 78.83m to create a new championship record.
Also yesterday, the Moroccan quartet broke the championship record in the women’s 4x100 relay.
Shenak Jumma, Haya Al Mubaraki, Lamiya Lebaz and Yamna Hajaji clocked a time of 46.59secs to edge Tunisia and Oman to the gold medal.
The previous record of 46.63secs was held by Algeria.
Qatar’s Ahmed was satisfied with his performance in the men’s triple jump final.
“I’m very happy with this performance. My concentration today was good,” Ahmed said after competing.
“My next assignment is the Asian Athletics Championships in India. Now I have improved my physical condition,” he added.
When asked about his participation at this year’s Athletics World Championships in Moscow, Ahmed said: “I have still not qualified for the World Championships. Hopefully I can reach Moscow.”
After anchoring Morocco to the gold in the women’s 4x100m relay, a panting Haya Al Mubaraki barely managed a couple of sentences.
“We had won gold here in the Arab Games as well and so this is a double delight for us,” she said.
“It was good team effort from the rest of my girls. We were here to win nothing less than a gold and we managed to do that,” Al Mubaraki added.
In the men’s 4x100m relay, Omani runners topped a field that had only three teams.
Oman won the gold with a time of 39.83secs, finishing ahead of Iraq (41.35) and Bahrain (41.72).
“It was a good opportunity for us to qualify for the world championshiops and we could have beaten that record had all the countries been participating here,” Omani sprinter Fahad Khamis said yesterday.
“There were only three teams and you saw we finished with a difference of only three metres. We narrowly missed the championship record and we didn’t go full throttle. All credit goes to the entire team and we are extremely pleased to win gold,” he added.
Today, on the last of the four-day championship, 13 finals will be held at the same venue with action commencing at 5pm.
THE PENINSULA
