CAIRO, 17 November 2007 — Two more gold medals from athletes with special needs, Ali Al-Beshi and Fahad Al-Junaidel, were added to the Kingdom medal tally yesterday, sixth day of the 11th Pan Arab Games in Egypt.
“The three teams with special needs participating in this event are working very hard to make their country proud. They were trained for 21 days in the Kingdom. The table tennis team did another 21 days training in China while the athletics and weightlifting squads covered the same period in Tunisia,” said Abdulmuhsain Al-Mayouf, team manager of the weightlifting team with special needs.
All told Saudi Arabia have so far won 12 medals broken down as follows: 5 golds, 5 silvers and 3 bronzes.
The gold medals came from the equestrian individual and team show jumping events, judo under 60 kilograms courtesy of Eissa Majrashi, juvenile event and cycling for special needs compliments of Al-Beshi and Al-Junaidel respectively.
The silver medals were delivered in the men’s individual 70-meter archery event, fencing, swimming men’s 50-meter breaststroke, 100-meter race for special needs via a Saeed Al-Khalidi, and weightlifting 62 kilograms men’s snatch. The bronzes were contributions of swimming men’s 200 meter backstroke, weightlifting men’s 56 kilograms weight category via Mohammed Al Hubail, and wrestling event via Mohammed Al Salem in the men’s 120 kilogram Romans’ event.
Meanwhile, Saudi handball team will play their third preliminary match tomorrow against Libya. They won their first match on Monday crushing Iraq 36-25, and the success continued after beating Morocco 30-20 on Tuesday. Algeria, however, handed the Kingdom their first defeat on Thursday when they scored a 30-23 victory. After the Libya match, the Saudis take on Egypt and Jordan on Monday and Wednesday.
In the basketball competition being held in Alexandria, powerhouse Libya brought down Saudi Arabia by 61-59. The Saudis are expected to have their hands full in their second game against Jordan today.
The Saudi polo national team on Thursday suffered an 8-4 beating from the host squad. Saudi had only trained for two weeks before the event while the Egyptian had up to two months of training or more. This according to Saudi national team coach had made the big difference, “yet I believe our team did very well considering the period of time of training they had and it was seen especially in the first two sets.”
The coach said they were supposed to train the athletes earlier but unfortunately the athletes could not get leaves from their jobs in the private and government sectors. “For example I only saw Waleed Al-Ghamdi today. He barely managed to take few days off from work to participate and he is one of our best players. We really hope these sectors could be more cooperative,” said the Serbian coach.
Officials also said the referees were a bit tough on Saudis, as well as the fans who were cheering aggressively and distracting the players’ focus and concentration. The team had earlier won their first match against Kuwait 8-6 and are highly optimistic to win against Algeria today. “We might miss the gold but we will hopefully be able to win the silver inshalla because we have a very good team,” said the coach. The highly fancied 36-strong athletics team, potential gold mine for Saudi Arabia, arrived yesterday in Cairo. The athletes include 11 veterans of the World Championships held recently in Japan.
