It’s time to get back to business for the national athletes. After achieving much glory in Tokyo, the Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC) has started planning for the country’s participation in the future competitions with an eye on the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
While the well deserved celebration continues for Qatar’s historic performance at the recently-concluded Games, the QOC has started looking beyond Tokyo and launched an evaluation of team’s participation on both technical and administrative levels to maintain its dominance in future tournaments, which is the right strategy.
Fares Ibrahim and Mutaz Barshim won gold medals followed by a bronze medal by Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan in Tokyo making it Qatar’s best performance at the multi-sport event since the country made its Olympic debut at the Los Angeles Games in 1984. Qatar also finished as the best Arab side at the Games with their medals tally. The medal winning athletes were praised for their outstanding achievements and recently the Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani also honoured them for winning the accolades.
Qatar’s participation in Tokyo was a roaring success and the QOC President H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani sees a lot more potential for the country in the future. In an interview with the local media recently, he said Qatar’s achievements in Tokyo will serve as a “springboard” for Qatari sport and declared it as a “starting point”, which means Qatar is now targeting a rich haul of medals in Paris.
“Preparing new Olympic champions needs a big effort. We have promising talents and staff in more than one sport, and we are sparing no effort to work cooperatively with the sports federations and Aspire Academy to develop the skills of talented age groups in order to reach similar levels of Mutaz and Fares,” he said.
Sheikh Joaan was also satisfied with performance of women, who enjoy equal opportunities to practice sports. With the full support, the female athletes also have a bright future and the day is not far when they will start winning Olympic medals for the country.
Qatar participated in Tokyo Olympics with 15 athletes and those who were not able to win medals didn’t come back empty-handed as they returned with invaluable experience by competing at the top level, which will help the country in developing the skills of these promising athletes and building a new generation of stars and formidable teams.
Qatar has shown improvement in each Olympic Games since making debut in Los Angeles and with the QOC – under the wise leadership of Sheikh Joaan – headed in the right direction the national athletes will have the perfect platform to reach new heights in global competitions including the Paris Games.
