At last, a duck has been broken!
Last night, Bahrain finally etched her name in Olympic history with a first ever gold medal which was won in the 1500m mens’ race by Rasheed Ramzi.
We’re ranked 41st just behind Argentina and with the best Arab performance so far this Olympics. Rasheed deserves this medal after such strong showings in all the qualifiers and has added another treasured medal with his historic double (800m and 1500m) in Helsinki a few years back.
Some may feel a bit indifferent about this achievement saying that Rasheed “isn’t even a Bahraini!”, well to them all you need to do is look at Team GB and Team USA with the latter controversially letting a Sudanese born athlete be the flag bearer at the opening ceremony.
Sport -and especially Olympic sport- has become a global investment, and this gold medal shows that Bahrain’s investment in ‘naturalized’ athletes is paying off, and we still haven’t seen Maryam Jamal (do read her biography, it’s quite interesting!) who has an opportunity to win gold in Beijing in the women’s 1500m after winning in Osaka last year.
Bahrain’s own golden girl Ruqaya Al-Ghasra is also making us proud with strong showings in the qualifying rounds for the women’s 200m and is a step away from the finals!
So we wish all of Bahrain’s athletes the best and hoping for a gold rush- Bahrain Style.
ooh I found this and thought it would be funny to put this link for all you guys out there who need another reason to watch the olympics … Attractive Olympians! and notice that Ruqaya Al-Ghasra is not on it lol
too bad he got caught doping!