God willing, the Qatari youth national athletics team departs next Monday, 2 April 2012, to take part in the GCC Athletics Championship, to be held in Kuwait from 4-7 April with six countries taking part — Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait. The Qatari delegation will be headed by Mr Adel Mohammed Al Baker – Secretary General – and Mr Essa Abdullah Al Harami – Assistant Secretary General – as team manager, with Mr Ali Ahmed Saleh as team administrator, two officials, Mr Mosaad Saad Al Hajaji and Mr Yaqoub Yousef Al Mansouri, (11) coaches — Tarek Rigi, Salah Shabouh, Nichar Zaghouani, Mohammed Farraj Al Kaabi, Nikolai Senchev, Bohdan Adam, Khalid Yousef Al Obaidli, Evgeny Karsak, Stanislav Sizerba, Alexei Malikov — physiotherapist Skandar Falifol and masseur Andrei Plobkhin, and (20) athletes: Eid Abdullah Al Kuwari, Ali Hassan Al Jassim, Abdulrahman Abdullah Al Jassim, Mohammed Kifah Al Dosari, Mubarak Jamal Al Fayyad, Faisal Masoud Al Jassim, Abdullah Atiq Al Abdullah, Jamal Abdel Nasser, Rashed Saqer Al Ali, Jaber Khalifa Al Jaber, Khalid Mohammed Deeb Al Mughanni, Saad Salem Al Kuwari, Rashed Ali Al Khalifi, Jamal Hairan, Hashem Salah Abbas, Muayad Mohammed Ibrahim, Hussein Mohammed Muthanna, Musab Adam, Ashraf Amjad Al Saifi and Saeed Hamad Al Mahandi.
It is worth noting that the Qatari youth national athletics team took part in the previous edition of the championship, held on the Kifan track in Kuwait from 7-9 April 2010, and took second place at the GCC Athletics Championship, in which all GCC countries took part, with the Qatari team’s players collecting (5) gold medals, deservedly won by Saif Sabah Khairallah in the 110 m hurdles with a time of 14.71 seconds; the second gold medal went to Ismail Qasim in the shot put with a distance of 16.56 m; the third gold medal was claimed by javelin thrower Mohammed Qaida with a distance of 59.10 m; the fourth went to promising champion Mutaz Essa Barshim in the high jump, setting a new Qatari, Gulf and Arab record for the Shabab category of (2.21 m), while the fifth gold went to runner Mohammed Al Karni in the 1500 m,
while the five silver medals were won by Mohammed Al Manai in the long jump with a distance of 6.92 m; the second silver went to Abubaker Omar Al Haj with a time of 48.88 seconds; Badr Hashem Khamis took the third silver in the pole vault with a distance of 4.50 m; Mohammed Al Karni took the fourth silver medal in the 5000 m; and the fifth silver went to Hamza Deriouche in the 800 m. The three bronze medals were won by Muadh Abdulrahman Balla in the 3000 m steeplechase and Muadh Hussein Al Masri in the decathlon, while the third bronze went to the Qatari national team in the 4×400 m relay.
The host nation, Kuwait, took first place in the championship after collecting 7 gold, 9 silver and 5 bronze medals, while Bahrain came third with 5 gold and 2 silver medals, and Saudi Arabia came fourth with 4 gold, 6 silver and 10 bronze medals, while the UAE won only two bronze medals, and Oman did not win any medals.
