After sailing through a qualification round for the men’s high jump finals yesterday, Qatari track and field athlete Mutaz Barshim is now preparing to go for the gold at the IAAF World Championships in Beijing.
Barshim, 24, is one of the world’s best high jumpers, and holds a Olympic bronze medal and world silver medal in that category.
Last year, he came close to breaking the world record in the high jump by clearing 2.43 meters (about 8 feet), sparking a meme in which commenters used photoshop to demonstrate the scale of his prowess:
Finals
Yesterday, Barshim easily cleared the automatic qualification mark of 2.31 meters on his first attempt.
الى نهاااااائي المونديال 👏@mutazbarshim pic.twitter.com/vyeBRvFh7z
— زينب. (@Zainab_Ali_) August 28, 2015
On Twitter, the athlete thanked God for clearing the qualification round, and said he’d be competing in the finals on Sunday at 1:30pm Doha time. The event will be livestreamed here.
Support for the local remains strong, with many in Qatar wishing him good luck ahead of the jump:
https://twitter.com/RedBullQatar/status/636955477859962880
Do you plan to watch? Thoughts?
Of course. I watched Usain Bolt beat the drug junkie Gatlin.
Remind us again where he was born.
Qatar
I think he is a real Qatari and not a naturalized one. The same applies to Nasser Al Attiya and another rally champion. They are not many but Qatar has some talented athletes and will most probably have more in the future now that there is a considerable amount of efforts and investments put in sport.
“Real Qatari”? What the? Does that mean all the other Qataris representing the Qatar handball team, for instance, are not real Qataris? Fake Qataris?
Yep. Many of those who played in the latest Handball World Championships are “fake Qataris”. I am sure they all lost their Qatari passports by now. They did their job, got paid and that’s it. Sport is business 🙂
This is the sad issue that was touched upon on another thread recently – nowadays there are so many ‘fake Qataris’ that when a ‘real Qatari’ works hard and makes great achievements in his/her sport, the public will simply assume that he is just another ‘fake’ Qatari. I feel really sorry for Barshim, for a lot of people his skin color and his name will be all that people see when deciding if he is a real Qatari or not.
Where somebody was born is never related to nationality in Qatar ….
http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/culture/more-than-40-u-s-olympians-are-foreign-born-20120727
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/beijing/2008-07-18-immigrants_N.htm
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/19/how-many-sochi-athletes-are-competing-for-a-country-that-is-not-their-birth-nation/
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jun/24/uk-athletics-poaching-foreign-born-athletes-sponsors-zharnel-hughes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/11694746/Five-foreign-born-athletes-pledge-allegiance-to-Britain-reigniting-plastic-Brits-row.html
It wasn’t an issue in the US and UK … It isn’t one in Qatar!
Canadian born and bred won the Gold…. Oh Canada justsayin : )
Ukrainian born and bred won the silver. Chinese born and bred won the bronze. That might offer some pointers for where to look for some ‘new’ Qataris if they want to win more medals.
I have no problem with foreign born atheltes representing Qatar as all countries do it. What upsets me is that Qatar breaks its own laws to do it. To be a Qatari citizen you just be Muslim but very few if these people are Muslim as you can see but not adopting an Islamic name.
They close QDC abs bars because they say it goes against their religion but are happy to trade their religion for a few medals. Hypocrisy at its finest
You do make a valid point, but in the case of Barshim; he was born and raised in Qatar to a father who also competed for Qatar. So he probably has more grounds than his “compatriots.”
Apparently, the livestream is not available in your country.