Ashraf Hamed Atta
CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt will send its largest ever team to the Paris Olympics as it prepares to host the 2036 Summer Olympics, hoping to surpass its record medal haul three years ago.
The final decision on whether to launch a bid to host the Olympics for the first time in Africa rests with the government, but a senior official in the country's Olympic Committee told Reuters it was not a pipe dream.
“The state-of-the-art sports infrastructure that Egypt has built over the past few years has encouraged the country to think about hosting competitions that make use of its excellent human and organizational capabilities,” said Mohamed Abdel Aziz Ghoneim, treasurer of the Egyptian Olympic Committee (EOC).
“IOC President Thomas Bach said during his recent visit to our country that Egypt is ready to host the Olympics and has made great progress, with 60 percent of preparations including facilities and roads complete. The rest is about budget and financial issues.”
Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country, has spent billions of dollars in recent years building facilities, stadiums and sports cities as part of a plan to modernise the country.
The Egyptian International Olympic City, Egypt's new administrative capital, which Egypt has been building in eastern Cairo since 2015, is planned to include a 93,900-seat national stadium and 21 other sports facilities.
Ghoneim, who also serves as president of the Egyptian Boxing Federation (EGF), said the EOC was equally ambitious about sending a delegation to the country's 24th Summer Olympics, to be held in Paris in July and August.
Three years ago in Tokyo, Egypt's 132 athletes won six medals – one gold, one silver and four bronze – the country's most at a single Olympic Games.
So far, 142 athletes, both men and women, across 21 sports have qualified for Paris, and Ghoneim expects that number to rise to around 150 once the Olympic qualification rounds are completed.
“This big figure has been achieved thanks to the efforts of all Egyptian sports federations, who worked hard in collaboration with the Olympic Committee and the Youth Ministry to create the best preparations ever for our athletes,” Ghoneim said.
“With football, volleyball and handball having qualified to compete in Paris, and many federations performing well, the size of Olympic teams has increased compared to previous Games.”
Among them was the EGF, where two male boxers passed and bantamweight Youmna Ayyad became the first Egyptian female boxer to compete in the Olympic Games.
Youmna, from the coastal city of Damietta, began her career in martial arts such as karate and kung fu and went on to win a bronze medal at the 2022 Mediterranean Games, a first for Egyptian women's boxing.
Egyptian women had not competed until the 1972 Munich Games and although Feriyal Ashraf won the country's first gold medal in karate at the Tokyo Games three years ago, karate is not an event at this year's games.
Despite his confidence, Ghoneim wasn't ready to predict how many medals Egypt would win.
“All the federations tried their best. Success is in God's hands,” he said.
“The competition against the world champions will be very tough, but we have confidence in our players and the results they have achieved so far are proof enough.”
(Reporting by Ashraf Hamed Atta; Editing by Nick Mulvaney and Michael Perry)
