WHILE the Beijing Olympics was wrapping up recently, a young Saudi swimmer in a remote location was winning his own handful of medals in a GCC swimming competition for youths under 10.
I am sure that when Ali Al-Saddiq was happily climbing the podium at Al-Jazira Sports Club in Abu Dhabi to receive his medals, he had not the remotest idea that his sporting future is bleak if it exists at all. At best, his future may not go beyond achieving some regional feats of little value. The fate of this talent will not be better than the previous ones. Al-Saddiq will join the same circle around which most young Saudi talents have rotated. This happens despite the existence of a government body of ministerial rank called the General Presidency of Youth Welfare and despite abundant financial resources and many qualified national administrators.
In the year 2000, and after the disappointing results, China launched an ambitious national project called “the 119 Scheme” aimed at qualifying sportsmen and women to compete in the Olympics. They began this project eight years before the Beijing Olympics.
While countries that believe in planning and building of human resources were continuing to implement their plans aimed at training their sportsmen, we were fast asleep. We did not even blink or send any message to show that we have a wish to qualify our athletes.
When he won a bronze medal during the youth championship in Athens in 2001, the Saudi weightlifter Ramzi Al-Mahrous was hoping that his accomplishment would draw the attention of officials and that they would nurture and support his talent. Instead of sending him outside for training or bringing a special trainer for him, Al-Mahrous was left in his home town of Qatif complaining that he had no training equipment or a gymnasium. He said he and his colleagues were not looking for financial support but rather for medical compensation to treat themselves for possible injuries.
Seven years since Al-Mahrous won his bronze medal, he has fallen out of the public eye.
Our disappointment in Beijing was not due to our failure to win any medal for the second consecutive Olympics but because of the complete absence of any element or foundation that would ultimately lead to accomplishments. We are not crying over our failures but rather we are mourning the absence of a rational administration, the devaluation of planning and hard work, the absence of initiative and the lack of rewarding and appreciating accomplishments.
Except for the attempt by Hussain Al-Sabie in the long jump, no other Saudi athlete was ready to compete or was anywhere near seriously competing. This leads us to ask the question: What were the Saudi sports federations doing during the four years that followed the Athens Games?
A quick glance at the preparations of our federations for the big event will be enough to justify the reasons for our big disappointment. Our shooting champion Saeed Al-Mutairi was complaining to the press that he was participating in the second Olympic Games without a coach. The equestrian Ramzi Al-Dahhami was lamenting the meager support he got compared to what was given to the European teams. He also said there was one veterinarian for the Saudi horses while the Europeans had three veterinarians for each horse. Swimmer Badr Al-Mahana had an unknown trainer named Alexi Broddy who could not in any way be compared to the trainer of the Tunisian champion Oussama Mellouli, Mark Schubert, the technical supervisor of the American team to which Michael Phelps belonged. The most paradoxical news was that our genius weightlifter Ali Al-Dihalib and his trainer overslept and missed their event!
In order not to make it difficult for ourselves, we should exclude countries with deep-rooted sports traditions, such as America, Canada, Russia, China, the Asian Tigers, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and only to think of small and almost unknown countries like Jamaica, which won 11 medals, including six gold. Kenya had 14 medals, including five gold. A poor and war-stricken country like Ethiopia won seven medals, including four gold. This is not to mention neighboring countries like Turkey (eight medals); Iran, Algeria and Morocco (two each); and Bahrain, Tunisia, Malaysia, Sudan, Egypt, Israel and Afghanistan (one each). Was it really difficult for us to be on the same level with such countries as Kenya and Ethiopia? Was it impossible for us to qualify a single sportsman to bring us one medal?
Failure upon failure and still our officials were either content with their meager past achievements or still repeating the tedious talk about preparations for the future. We actually arrived at that future they were talking about without any harvest. We cultivate for a future, but when we arrive we discover that we were cultivating for the next one.
If we put the eight gold medals won by Michael Phelps alone on a scoreboard, he would occupy the 10th rank, beating out 104 countries.
This is the difference between those who nurture and qualify talents and those who send weightlifters who oversleep and miss their competitions.
