At the Tokyo Olympics, the weightlifter made history as he lifted Qatar’s first Olympic gold medal. 

Qatar’s weightlifter Fares Ibrahim is set to compete in the 2023 World Weightlifting Championships, which will host 2,500 athletes from 170 countries.

Held in Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh from 4 to September 17, the championship will serve as an obligatory event to qualify for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.

Ibrahim has had his sights set on the Paris Olympics after winning the gold medal in the men’s 96kg weightlifting competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

At 25 years old, Ibrahim has already competed in two Olympics.

In the 2016 Summer Olympics, Ibrahim placed eighth in the men’s 85 kg before being updated to seventh after original bronze medalist Gabriel Sincraian failed a drug test.

Winning Qatar’s first Olympic Gold on the Tokyo stage, Ibrahim credited his victory to the four-year preparation in between 2016 and 2020.

“We entered the competition in Tokyo with the aim of winning gold. We had charted out a plan right after the 2016 Olympics,” Ibrahim said in a postgame interview.

“We had confidence in the work we did and the efforts made by the federation, the team, the coach, the assistant coach, and the entire apparatus, and thank God our effort was crowned with a gold medal,” Ibrahim added.

Becoming the first Qatari Olympic Champion, Ibrahim will get another opportunity to create history if he achieves the set qualification pathway for the upcoming tournament.

Qualifying for the Olympics

According to the Olympic Qualification Ranking (OQR), weightlifters will be tested on the best total results in snatch, clean, and jerk categories.

Athletes must participate in the 2023 IWF World (Senior) Championships and 2024 IWF World Cup as well as a minimum of three of the following events (2022 IWF World (Senior) Championships) (2023 Continental (Senior) Championships) (2023 IWF Grand Prix I) (2023 IWF Grand Prix II) (2024 Continental (Senior) Championships).

The weightlifting Paris 2024 qualification period for the OQR began on 1 August 2022, and will come to an end on 28 April 2024, a few months before the Paris Summer Olympics kick-off.

The Paris Olympics will have a considerably smaller host of athletes, especially in the weightlifting competition, as only 120 athletes can compete.

This is a drop from 196 in Tokyo and a further drop from the 260 who competed at London 2012 and Rio 2016.

Paris 2024 will occur from 26 July to 22 August 2024, and will be Qatar’s eleventh consecutive appearance.