From left: Qatar's Yahya Ibrahim, Bassem Hemeida, Abderrahman Samba and Ismail Dawood react after finishing fifth in the 4x400 metres final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo yesterday.
Doha, Qatar: Qatar signed off with a solitary medal at the 2025 World Athletics Championships as the 4x400 metres relay team finished fifth in yesterday’s final.
The Qatari relay quartet of Abderrahman Samba, Yahya Ibrahim, Bassem Hemeida and Ismail Dawood had made history by advancing to the final of the 4x400m relay for the first time, but a medal was not within their reach.
On Saturday, the team finished second in their heat with a national record time of 3:00.15 minutes, qualifying for the final.
However, the final, which took place under heavy rain at the National Stadium, proved to be a difficult affair.
The team finished in fifth place with a time of 3:01.64, while Botswana charged ahead in the final stretch to win the gold, clocking a time of 2:57.76.
While Botswana became the first African nation to win the men’s 4x400 metres relay gold in the history of the Championships, favourites USA came second as South Africa completed the podium in third place. Belgium finished in fourth place, half a second faster than Qatar.
Qatar’s only medal came when Samba secured a bronze medal in the men’s 400m hurdles with a season-best time of 47.06 seconds.
It was also his second World Championships bronze medal, following his achievement at the Doha Worlds in 2019.
However, there were a few notable performances by Qatar athletes, particularly in the 400 metres hurdles and the men’s pole vault. Dawood, apart from being part of the history-making relay team, had also reached the final of the 400m hurdles, finishing in eighth place with a time of 49.82 seconds.
Earlier, the 21-year-old Dawood set a new personal best in the semi-finals with a time of 47.61 seconds, proving his potential in the highly competitive discipline.
In the same event, former Asian champion Hemeida also advanced to the semi-finals. However, despite clocking a personal best time of 48.29 seconds,
Hemeida missed out on a place in the final after finishing third behind the eventual world champion Rai Benjamin of the US and the silver winner Alison Dos Santos of Brazil.
In other track events, Ibrahim Abbas Chuot (800 metres) and Oumar Doudai Abakar (110 metres hurdles) failed to advance.
Meanwhile, in the men’s pole vault, Qatar’s Seif Heneida set new personal, national, and regional records after qualifying for the final. The 20-year-old Heneida cleared the bar at 5.75m to finish in ninth spot in the final, which was dominated by the Swedish superstar Armand Duplantis who went on to renew his own world record, clearing 6.30 metres.
