It is the end of the summer of 1984, in one of the oldest neighborhoods of Alexandria in Egypt, where the masses lined up to applaud the Olympic champion Mohamed Ali Rashwan after he achieved the silver medal in the Los Angeles Olympic Games in judo after a complete break from winning any Olympic medal since the 1960 session in Rome, much celebration and love prevailed in the air, although the majority of those standing did not know much about judo.
Twenty-four years of Olympic deprivation was cut by Muhammad Rashwan with a medal loaded with fame and sportsmanship, despite his famous defeat in the final against Japanese legend Yasuhiro Yamashita when he refused to take advantage of his opponent’s injury in his foot before the match, preferring to lose the gold medal over a win tainted by exploitation.
Years pass and the year 2008 comes, and just two kilometers from the place where the Egyptians celebrated the famous Rashwan silver, the place witnesses another celebration for another Egyptian judo champion, the hero Hisham Mosbah, after winning the bronze in the 90 kilograms weight at the Beijing Olympic Games.
Twenty-four years between two Olympic medals for two Egyptian champions from the same neighborhood and city, and who were tutored by the same coach, Abdel Moneim al-Wahsh, was not enough to convince the officials of the game in Egypt that they have the tip of the thread to start a new era and build on what has been achieved, and also did not convince any of the officials Sports in Egypt The beginning of the construction of a sports project for judo throughout Egypt in general, and in Alexandria in particular, instead of the futile pursuit of games that were not and will not be accessible to Arab countries one day.
All of this leads us to an important question: Why do all Arab countries tend to engage in difficult and sometimes impossible digital competitions, despite the presence of a great treasure in their hands represented in combat sports with which we can confront all countries of the world and excel in them?
Before answering the difficult question, we must look at Egypt's record of Olympic medals throughout history. Throughout its entire Olympic history, Egypt achieved 32 Olympic medals before the current Tokyo Games, and with the exception of silver and bronze for Egyptian diving champion Mohamed Farid Samika in the 1928 Amsterdam Games, the medals did not go out in only 6 games: taekwondo, judo, boxing, and weightlifting. Wrestling, and fencing, all of which are combat games in which two competitors compete against each other except for weightlifting, which, by the way, is the most important, strongest and most medal-winning game in Egypt. (1)
However, we find that there is a strong insistence on the part of those in charge of the sport to focus attention on difficult and highly specialized sports that require huge expenses to make an Olympic champion in them as an equestrian game, which is the most expensive among all sports because of its obvious dependence on horses that require a specialized trainer, safe transportation and a lot of money Egypt has no real competitive history in this sport during any previous Olympics.
Let's talk, for example, about Andrei Sakakini, a name that has been used frequently in Egypt for four Olympics. The man was traveling to compete with great hopes and ambitions accompanied by material and moral support and talk about an imminent medal, to fail and come back time after time, and instead of learning the lesson, the Equestrian Federation made the same mistake four times in a row without achieving any medal or competition for a position, to end up with Andrei Sakakini. After he finished Egypt, he went to Italy and played in its name without success either, but the Italians did not allow him to continue, so that the man stopped playing the role of the Olympic champion forever, but this was after he drained a lot of money allocated to sports and deprived real athletes of the financial support due . (2)
But the crisis is not in the equestrian sport alone. There are several other sports that Egypt has not and will not have a great deal in in the Olympic track, such as triathlon, rowing, and bow and arrow, in addition to swimming and jogging at short distances. Apparently decent.
It is not only a matter of financial capabilities. There are poorer and less developed countries than Egypt, but they have succeeded in securing prominent places in the Olympics. Take, for example, Kenya, which participated in the Olympic Games for the first time in its history in 1958, that is, 46 years after the first Egyptian participation, yet it succeeded in achieving 103 Olympic medals, including 96 medals in athletics alone, a number that is very close to what was achieved by all Arab countries combined. Kenya is also the country with the most medals in Africa, and these achievements culminated in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where Kenya ranked 13th as the best place an African country has achieved in the Olympic Games historically. (3)
All these numbers lead us to one fact, which is that Kenya has realized that its real strength is in athletics, and that its superiority lies in the enjoyment of its players with a distinctive physique. If it is focused on and exploited optimally, it will make a great history for the poor African country, which is what actually happened. Where Kenya cared for the enemy and devoted itself to it and focused its efforts on it until it became the first superpower in the world in this field. Nairobi was not scattered and spent its little money in games that were useless just for practice, but all its efforts were poured into athletics, and not long ago it began to be more interested in short sprints that it does not excel, as Ferdinand Omniyala, the national record holder stated For the 100m sprint, the world sees Kenyans as incapable of sprinting, but we will soon be changing their perceptions of us. (4)
The situation in Ethiopia is no different from Kenya. In fact, the most brutal poverty in the country that has suffered from decades of famine prompted many of its citizens to take up running in the hope of changing the bitter reality and achieving achievements that would extricate them from hunger, which made it the permanent competitor to African Kenya in the Olympics and the most advanced For the marathon champions in recent decades, and we see the two countries permanently on the podiums, while we rarely see an Ethiopian or Kenyan competitor in other games.
Hicham El Guerrouj
Morocco has lived decades of brilliance in the athletics field, starting with Abdel Salam Al Radi, the first Moroccan to achieve a medal for his country in the sprint races, through the two legends Said Aouita, and Nawal Al Mutawakel, the first Arab woman to be crowned an Olympic medal, to Hicham El Guerrouj and Hasna Benhsi, but the state of athletics Moroccan ended up in a form that does not satisfy anyone.
The state abandoned athletics and was neglected instead of generalizing interest in it throughout the state, until the big names disappeared from the scene and were replaced by half-talented people.
You are surprised when you see Kenya maintain its sporting entity and fight despite its poverty to preserve the world fame it has reached, while countries are richer and possess the human element and the appropriate atmosphere, such as Egypt and Morocco, and cannot complete the successes they achieved before.
“Do we spend to find a champion or do we spend to expand the base of practice?” This is the question that comes to the minds of many sports fans and followers.
What is the priority in financial spending on sports?
Is the search for a new Michael Phillips among the Arab peoples?
Or will the same funds be directed to broadening the base of neglected practice?
If we are looking for the impossible, then creating an Olympic champion, much less even than Michael Phillips, costs millions of dollars and long hours of training and waiting, especially since we, in our Arab world, lack the expert eye that chooses the champion carefully among the crowds of ordinary athletes, so the logical solution remains Spending on specialized sports centers to increase the number of game players.
The golden rule says that the greater the number of sports practitioners in a country, this allows for the exit of many talents from among their ranks, and therefore talent is the one who imposes itself and forces everyone to take care of it and take care of it, then we will find real champions who deserve financial support and support.
Tunisian swimmer Oussama Mellouli
In their Olympic history, which extends since 1912, when Egypt participated in the first Olympic Games, the Arabs won 109 different medals, with the exception of the Egyptian diving medals and the coronations of Tunisian swimmer Osama Mellouli in the long distances, whether inside the Olympic bath or outdoors, 90% of the Arab medals for the usual combat games, athletics and weightlifting, in addition to a few shooting medals for the Gulf countries. (5)
All of this did not change anything, and did not prompt some to think about how to focus on creating another Hicham Guerrouj, or a new Said Aouita, or a successor to Karam Jaber, or an extension of Muhammad Ali Rashwan, Hassiba Boumerka and Hasna Benhasi.
The minds of those in charge of sports in the Arab countries have not realized that focusing on five games and achieving great successes in them, and focusing financial support on them, is much better than spending big on a group of difficult games that are not commensurate with the physical nature of the Arab person, but sometimes the matter has other accounts. It is not related to sports or exercise.
In this regard, the pioneers of social networking sites transmitted a paper with a list of expenditures on the preparation of the Egyptian delegation in the Olympic Games currently being held in Tokyo. He emphasized the numbers mentioned in them, which raise many questions.
(6)
Most of these questions, of course, relate to the priority of spending on different sports. For example, how does the Egyptian Olympic Committee allocate a sum of money for triathlon, representing 50% of the total amount allocated to taekwondo despite the competitiveness of taekwondo and its ability to achieve medals, which has already been achieved, while the weakness of the triathlon mission represented by only one female athlete, Basma Salmoni, who did not Do you achieve any success, fail and withdraw from the race? It does not make sense for the IOC to equate the federations that have not awarded any Olympic medals in history with other federations that are going to compete and need more preparation and more spending on camps.
From the public’s point of view, the solution is easy, and the application is also easy and does not require all this delay, and is represented in several principles; Including, for example, focusing on a limited number of games and starting to lay the foundations and rules for selecting talented people in them, and establishing centers specialized in those competitive games, for example: a judo center only in Alexandria, a center for weightlifting in Gharbia Governorate, and a center specialized in running for medium and long distances in the upper The mountains in Morocco to benefit from the physical nature of the people of those areas, and so on everywhere in the Arab countries.
On the other hand, it is preferable to reduce spending on games that do not achieve success or achievements, while not neglecting them and directing the amounts saved from them to support successful games to bring out more heroes.
We all know that making an Olympic champion is not an easy thing, as it requires a lot of effort, work, patience, struggle and financial spending, but in our Arab countries we can shorten many of those things that we have no energy for because we have the natural talents and the physical structure of sports we can succeed and compete in and have Big sold.
Always when we see weightlifting, we remember Bulgaria, boxing reminds us of Cuba, wrestling in Russia, and running in Kenya and Ethiopia. Like them, we want Egypt to be associated with judo, Morocco with athletics, Jordan with boxing, and Tunisia with long-distance swimming.
We need to focus on what we do best in order to get the world's attention, and etch the names of our heroes proudly on the walls of Olympic stadiums and in Olympic history books.
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Sources:
The number of Egypt's Olympic medals throughout history - Olympia
Andrei Sakakini's results in all his Olympic participations - Olympic Archives
All Kenya Olympic Medals Historically - Olympia
Ferdinand Omniala's statement on Kenya's future plan - Reuters
List of medals of Arab countries throughout their Olympic history - Russia Today
Parliamentary move due to spending 280 million pounds on the mission – Al-Watan