Promising Qatari champion Mutaz Essa Barshim set a new national and Arab junior high jump record of 2.25m at his training camp currently under way in Sweden, in preparation for the Asian Junior Championships to be held in Vietnam from 1-4/7/2010 and the World Junior Championships to be held in Canada from 25-29/8/2010. It is worth noting that the gold medallist in the high jump at the previous World Junior Championships, held in Poland in 2008, Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko, cleared a height of 2.26m, while the silver medal went at 2.24m, which makes us optimistic that, God willing, we can achieve a strong position in the high jump at the upcoming World Junior Championships. The promising champion Barshim has broken the Arab junior record three times this season in international competitions, setting the first mark in April in Kuwait at the GCC Junior Championship with a height of 2.21m, then breaking it in Cairo at the Arab Junior Championships in May with a height of 2.23m, then breaking it again with his current mark in Sweden of 2.25m, this mark also standing as a Qatari record for the junior and men’s categories. Barshim also managed, at a training camp in Sweden in February, to break the Qatari indoor record for juniors and men with a height of 2.25m, bringing the number of records set by our promising champion this season to (11) records for juniors and men, indoors and outdoors, including three Arab junior records.
