JEDDAH, 17 May 2008 — Ismael Al-Sibyani scored a golden treble as Saudi Arabia reasserted their supremacy in the 11th GCC Athletics Championship that ended on Thursday night at the Prince Naif Sports City in Al-Qatif.
The Kingdom have won the past two stagings of the tournament, finishing with a 7-10-6 gold, silver, bronze medal haul in the 10th championship and with 14-12-10 tally in the 9th edition of the meet held every two years.
Bannered by mostly junior athletes, the host country, in winning the event for the third consecutive time, closed out their campaign with 22 medals (11 golds, 5 silvers, and 6 bronzes).
Kuwait were a distant second at 4-2-7, while third place went to Qatar with (4-4-6), fourth to Oman with (2-5-3), fifth to Bahrain with (1 gold, 1 silver), and sixth to UAE with 2 silver medals. During the awards ceremony, the Saudi organizing committee handed the flag of the event to Bahrain’s organizing committee that will host the 12th edition of the championship in 2010.
The Saudis swept both relays with Al-Sibyani helping the Kingdom quartet to victory in the 4X400m in 3 minutes and 11.51 seconds on the last day of the meet.
Adil Al-Nassir, Younis Al-Houssa and Ali Al-Deran were the other members of the winning team. The 4X100m relay team claimed the gold in 41.84.
The two other gold medals of Al-Sibyani came in the 200 and 400 meters where he clocked 20.68 seconds and 46.88 seconds. His teammate Younis Al-Housa came third with a clocking of 48.35.
“It is always exciting to compete with our neighboring countries in the GCC and this competition came as part of our preparations for the Youth World Championship to be held in Poland. This is what we are concentrating on,” Al-Sibyani told Arab News in a phone interview.
Also, Mubarak Al-Jasir’s double victory in the jumping events and new Saudi records by Duaij Al-Sagi and Sami Haidar on the way to golds in the javelin throw and 110-m hurdles highlighted Saudi Arabia’s hot display in the three-day event.
Al-Jasir led teammate Ahmad Faraj to a 1-2 Saudi finish in the triple jump, where they had efforts of 15.40 and 15.25 meters respectively. A similar result occurred in the high jump with Al-Jasir grabbing the gold over teammate Majid Gahis. Al-Jasir cleared the bar at 7.62 meters and Gahis at 7.10.
Al-Sagi finally broke the 20-year old record of 4.71 meters when he threw the javelin to a distance of 4.73, while Haidar’s time of 13.61 seconds is a new national record that also passed the qualifying time for the Poland championship this summer.
The other double gold medalists for Saudi Arabia were Al-Deran, who also won the 800 meters in 1:51.12 in addition to the 4X400 relay, and Imad Nour who clinched the golds in the 1,500 meters in 4:12.70 and 3,000 steeplechase in 9:65.9. Ali Al-Aboud won the steeplechase bronze medal in 11:01.6.
Mohamed Al-Ahsaai in the decathlon, Ali Al-Ferdan in the 10-k race and Adil Al-Nassir in the 400-m hurdles were the Kingdom’s silver medal winners. Al-Ahsaai collected 5,380 points while Al-Ferdan negotiated the distance in 1:00.53, well ahead of teammate Ali Foad who got the bronze with a clocking of 1:06.40. Al-Nassir clocked 53.99 seconds.
The other bronze medalists were Abdulrahman Al-Amri, Hassan Al-Hababi and Abdulhadi Al-Iniz who returned 54.34 meters, 1 minute 56.05 seconds and 35.13 minutes in the hammer throw, 800 meters and 10,000 meters.
Meanwhile, Mohammed Shaween set a new Saudi record of 3:33.90 in the 1,500 meters on the way to a fifth-place finish in the Qatar Athletics Super Grand Prix recently.
He bettered his own record 3:38.18. His coach Saad Shadad said, “It is considered a strong time this year and hopefully he and the rest would be able to bring more better clockings.”
