Qatar Wins First Olympic Gold Medals in Weightlifting and High Jump!!

TWO first golds in one Olympics!

We have yet another new nation to honor under the Sanders Olympic Policy: Qatar. The nation whose name would be a great Scrabble word if it was not a proper noun has won one silver and four bronze (hat tip to Wikipedia) up to 2021 but has never heard its national anthem during a medal ceremony. Not any more!

This is one reason for the Sanders Olympic Policy: To ensure that the smaller nations are not forgotten. (It is also a protest against sports imperialism caused in large part by too many pro athletes occupying the key sports such as basketball, tennis, golf and downhill skiing. [I discovered that you can be a pro fencer or pro swimmer but I am not sure how!] It also is a mild protest against over doing the jingoism for USA.)

Qatar is one of the Islamic monarchies. From nationsonline:

The country is situated on a peninsula that extends from the Arabian Peninsula approximately 160 km (99 mi) north into the Persian (Arab) Gulf, it is bordered by Saudi Arabia. Qatar shares maritime borders with Bahrain, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates.

The country covers an area of 11,586 km² (4,473 sq mi) making Qatar about 1.25 times larger than Cyprus, or also somewhat larger than Puerto Rico.

The emirate has a population of 2.6 million inhabitants (end 2016), but Qatari nationals represent only a minority. Capital and largest city is Doha (Ad Dawhah, pop 800,000). Spoken language is Arabic (official).

Then after Fares Elbakh wins a weightlifting gold medal, (here is his ceremony) Qatar wins gold again in the high jump. Here is a local Qatar news story on it.

Doha: Qatar’s two-time world champion Mutaz Barshim wins an Olympic gold medal at Tokyo in high jump bringing second gold medal for Qatar from Olympics 2020. 

Qatar’s Barshim is joint gold medal winner as he and Italian Gianmarco Tamberi cleared 2.37m without any misses and failed to clear 2.39m.

The gold medal was split by agreement of the two victors. From the BBC:

After an exhausting two-hour competition, the pair couldn’t be split, having recorded best clearances of 2.37 metres.

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But in a moment of sportsmanship, they agreed to share the title, sparking huge celebrations.

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Instead, they made history – it was the first joint Olympic podium in athletics since 1912.

Nice move on both athletes’ part. Here is a short blurb on the sharing of the medal. Qatar gets the victory lap with flag at home. Here is the national anthem. Both Fares Elbakh and Mutaz Essa Barshim get the Official Sanders Tout. May both of you be national heroes in your home country. Be blessed in Jesus both of you.