DOHA, 12 December 2006 — While Qatar impressed the world by putting on a good show as hosts of the 15th Asian Games their Gulf neighbors Saudi Arabia were no less impressive with their own explosive show in the sporting arena.
Yesterday, the Kingdom won a gold medal each in equestrian and athletics. And their men’s volleyball team scored a historic straight sets quarterfinal victory over Asia’s No. 1 and world No. 6 Japan 25-20, 27-25, 25-21 to set up a semifinal showdown with China tomorrow at Al Rayyan Indoor Hall.
The double gold on the day hiked the Kingdom medal tally to seven gold and four bronze medals and seventh in the standings of the 45-nation continental competition.
The surprising Kingdom, who already matched their gold output from the 2002 Busan Games, are not done yet with medals still to be won on the final day of athletics and equestrian.
Riders Prince Abdullah Al Saud, Khaled Al-Eid, Abdullah Sharbatly and Kamal Bahamdan paved the way for the Kingdom’s golden double when they romped to the gold by finishing both rounds of the team show jumping event with the least penalties of four points. Korea took the bronze with 13 penalty points and UAE the bronze with 16.
Later in the day, strongman and former Pan Arab junior champion Sultan Abdulmajeed Al-Hebshi threw a personal best 20.42 for the gold in the men’s shot put as the 31-strong Saudi athletics team continued to befuddle the opposition at the Khalifa Stadium with four golds and two bronzes. In the individual show jumping, Prince Abdullah and Al-Eid qualified joint first with Korean Sang Wuk Song after the individual second qualifier. They head the 24 riders from an original field of 53 that will compete for medals in the individual round A and round B.
With nothing to lose and everything to gain against their powerhouse opponents, the Saudi spikers captained by Esmael Al-Khaibary played their game plan to the letter surprising the Japanese with a high level display of volleyball.
Ahmed Al-Bakhet, 24, was the top point-getter for the Saudi with 22 points followed by Abdullah Al-Bahli with 17.
Team Manager Saleh Al-Qasem was confident of his team’s performance. He told Arab News before the match that whatever happens the match would do a lot of good for his squad.
“Simply because no other Arab or Gulf country managed to reach the quarterfinals before and I have no doubt in my team’s skills and performance. They trained and will do the best they could,” he said. “This is a record in history on its own.”
Al-Qasem said the Saudis delivered a high level performance because they have been challenged to give it their best shot by the Japanese.
“We used the same techniques in our match against India. We did not want to give the Japanese any chance and so they felt pressured and our team was determined to win and did it, thanks to God and for their determination,” he said.
On their way to the quarterfinal, the Saudi volleyball team beat, in addition to India, Kuwait 3-2, UAE 3-0, and Lebanon 3-0 in the preliminaries.
The Saudis qualified for the final of both the mens’ relays, but there were failures in the 200m and 800m final races. Hamid Al-Bishi, 26, wound up fourth at 20.83 and Adel Asseri, 16, seventh in the 200m. Al-Deraan, 16, placed 4th with his clocking of 1:48:48 and 20-year old Mohammed Al-Salihi was 6th in 1:48:95 in the 800m.
Saudi Anti-Doping Program
Menatime, the Saudi Arabian Anti Doping Committee program being enforced at the Asiad is very effective and helped increase awareness among athletes, “and gave surprising results in a very short period of time,” according to General Secretary of Saudi Arabian Anti Doping Committee (SAADC) Bader Al-Saeed.
Al-Saeed who was with the Saudi Arabian national teams since 2001 at the Arabian Championship in Tunisia told Arab News that huge improvements are witnessed now in the team level of awareness.
“Those who were a bit hesitant before when it came to checking them up, are now very confident especially that they were trained on it and learnt about it continuously,” he said.
Around 15 meetings were held during the Asian Games to enlighten the athletes, teams’ officials and administrators. Sometime he said, “I try to stay with the athlete alone if I sense that he has more questions to answer and try to answer it all.” According to Al-Saeed some of the athletes used to pass beside the World Anti-Doping agency (WADA) without knowing what it stands for, but now as he takes 3 to 4 of the athletes who have free times to introduce WADA to them, “I see more following us,” he said. The athletes are encouraged to check the WADa websites and answer the questions regarding anti-doping which are available in many languages among them Arabic. They want to know, he added, and they grasp all the info in a very surprising way. Al-Saeed said that last year he conducted a survey on 320-340 athletes to check their knowledge on the subject, and when he did it this year the results came very promising.
“Whenever one learns something he goes and educate his colleagues about it, which means he found it useful and convincing, and also those we are heading in the right direction,” he said.
When these athletes got a solid background on their rights and what they should do and should not do it helped increasing their confidence. For example some of them did not know that when they are requested for a checkup by WADA they could go and change, some thought they should go immediately. The also know that they could take a companion but only one who is of the officials, like Al-Saeed. A very good hint some did not know about that during the hour of their request for a checkup, they must not drink tea or coffee.
It is good to stay updated with the WADA programs and the world ant doping courses but it was also useful, Al-Saeed said, to get closer to the players and just keep enlighten them via these meetings and see what they have in mind and answers it. “Sometimes the simple ways reaches them faster and this is what happened with me Thank God.”
In addition to the one month courses given before Asiad kicked off to most of the Saudi federations, and the meetings held here, another method was used this time. Al-Saeed said that instead of just writing the info in books that might not be read, they decided to print it on posters and posted on the walls where the Saudi delegation stays so they would read it and if they had questions they would ask.
