Ghazal will compete in the high jump at the Tokyo Olympics tomorrow

Tokyo-Sana

Majd Ghazal, a Syrian national athletics player, will compete in the Olympic Games to be held in Tokyo at dawn next Friday.

Ghazal is looking forward to competing in the high jump competitions in the tournament at the best level and striving to overcome the qualifying stage, which is the most difficult, and reach the final.

In a statement to SANA, Ghazal said the spirits are high to participate in the race, despite all the difficult circumstances that accompanied a preparatory march due to the Corona pandemic, which affected the course of the training plan in addition to the injury I suffered, adding that he had not participated in any foreign championship for two years due to the pandemic and travel restrictions.

Ghazal continued: I do not want to analyze and speculate, and leave it to the facts of the competitions, while emphasizing that I will do everything in my power to reach the final.

This is Ghazal's fourth participation in the Olympic event after Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016, where he ranked seventh in the Rio Olympics with 2.29 meters, knowing that his personal record is 2.36 meters in the challenge course in Beijing 2016 and in his latest achievements he won the bronze medal in the 2017 championship The world in London after jumping 2.29 meters and in 2019 he achieved the gold of the Asian Championship in Doha, setting the best world and Asian record for this year by jumping to a height of 2.31 meters.

Ghazal is competing with 31 players from 25 countries in the high jump competition, all of whom are elite champions, including Qatari Moataz Issa Barshim, Russian Ilya Ivanyuk, Australian Brandon Stark, Ukrainian Andrei Protsenko, Chinese Wang Yu, in addition to Donald Thomas and Jamal Wilson. Most of them participated in many forums, especially the Diamond League. At a time when Ghazal missed the participation for various reasons.

Friday will be the date of the high jump qualifiers and August 1 for the finals, noting that the world record was set by Cuban Javier Sotomayor 2.45 meters in Salamanca, Spain on July 27, 1993, and the Olympic record was set by American Charles Austin 2.39 meters in Atlanta on July 28, 1996 .

In a similar statement, coach Imad Al-Sarraj indicated that we have recently tried to reach a good technical condition after recovering from injury and the spirits of Ghazal are high despite the state of psychological pressure he is experiencing to provide the best level and as a result of raising the flag of his country and preserving his name and the achievements he made over the past years.

Al-Sarraj indicated that many circumstances beyond the player’s control affected his preparations due to the epidemic, travel restrictions, non-participation and distance from the atmosphere of competition during the past two years, in addition to the absence of external camps, as they were limited to camps in the Sultanate of Oman and the absence of competitors in Syria and thus away from the atmosphere of champions The competition, and the injury that Majd suffered three months ago, in which he lost an important stage of training.

Table tennis player Hend Zaza, triathlete player Mohamed Maso and swimmer Ayman Kalzieh ended their participation in the tournament, while Ghazal, who is competing in the qualifiers for the high jump competition, remains to be contested by jockey Ahmed Hamsho and weightlifter Maan Asaad on the third and fourth of next month, respectively.

Hana Sokoor