Sanchez announces Qatar squad for Golden Cup

Zagreb-Team Qatar's Coach Felix Sanchez on Thursday announced a 23-member squad to participate in the CONCACAF Gold Cup 2021. At the Gold Cup, debutants and Asian Cup champions Qatar will play their Group matches against Honduras, Grenada and Panama in Group D. Team Qatar will play their first Gold Cup match against Panama on July 13. The Asian champions will play their other Group D matches against Grenada on July 17 and Honduras on July 20. The top two teams from the four groups will advance to the quarter-finals on July 25. Qatar Squad: Saad Al Sheeb, Meshaal Barsham, Yusuf Hassan, Abdelkarim Hassan, Tariq Salman, Ahmed Suhail, Musab Kheder, Bassam Al Rawi, Homan Ahmed, Boualem Khoukhi, Mohammed Waad, Assim Madebo, Karim Boudiaf, Ismail Mohammed, Abdullah Al Ahrak, Abdulaziz Hatem, Akram Afif, Hassan Al Haydos, Youssef Abdurisag, Almoez Ali, Mohammed Muntari and Ahmed Alaaeldin.  

Qatar Swimming Association gears up to host GCC Aquatics Championships

Doha- The Qatar Swimming Association started its preparations to host the 28th Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Aquatics Championships, which will be held from August 19-22 at Hamad Aquatics Centre. In this context, the event’s organizing committee held a meeting headed by Secretary General of the Qatar Swimming Association Talal Al Darwish, in the presence of board members and heads of working committees, to discuss the arrangements for the event. The 28th GCC Aquatics Championships was scheduled to take place last year 2020 before the GCC Swimming organizing committee decided to move the championship to this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 27th GCC Aquatics Championships was held in Kuwait in 2019, where Team Qatar claimed first place in the age groups for the fourth time in a row after winning 34 medals, including 17 gold medals, 10 silver medals and 7 bronze medals. It is worth noting that the Qatar Swimming Association will also organize the 5th leg of the FINA Swimming World Cup 2021 form October 21.

Yonekura, Ferrari qualify for Olympic Games

Doha-Japan’s Hidenobu Yonekura on Saturday qualified for the next month’s Tokyo Olympics by winning the men’s vault final during the 13th FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Cup at the Aspire Dome. The Doha leg was specifically designed by FIG for individual specialists and was applicable to those who couldn’t qualify to the Olympics through the 2018-2019 World Championships. Before heading into the vault final, South Korea’s Shin Jeahwan led the overall rankings. But Yonekura overtook the Korean with a score of 15.016 in the final on Saturday that earned him a ticket to Tokyo. Igor Radivilov and Andrey Medvedev finished second and third respectively on the podium. Italy’s 2006 world all-around champion Vanessa Ferrari finally grabbed the opportunity to win the women’s floor final which also earned her a ticket to the Summer Games next month. The floor Olympic qualifying spot was up for grabs, and the race was between her and compatriot Lara Mori. Mori led the floor rankings ahead of the final, and Ferrari needed to either win the final, or place second but ahead of Mori with a score higher than 13.266 to secure the top floor ranking spot. The 30-year-old collected 14.266 points for her rhythm and acrobatic style on the floor. Mori finished second (13.633) while Brazil’s Lorrane Oliveira (12.633) came third. Hungarian Zsofia Kovacs, who finished fifth, and Ukrainian Diana Varinska (seventh) have already qualified for the Olympics before the Doha event. Turkey’s reigning European champion Ferhat Arican was confidence personified on the parallel bars. The 27-year-old combined grace and rhythm to pick up the gold (15.566 points). Petro Pakhniuk, who won a gold with the Ukraine team at the European Championships last December, finished second followed by Brazil’s Caio Souza.

Qatar's Duha Al Habshi qualifies for finals of Artistic Gymnastics World Cup

DOHA- Qatar's Duha Al Habshi qualified for the women's vault final at the 13th Artistic Gymnastics World Cup here at the Aspire Dome on Wednesday. She had a cumulative score of 11.850 to finish fourth behind France's Coline Devillard (14.033), Uzbekistan's seven-time Olympian Oksana Chusovitina (13.566) and Egypt's Nancy Taman (13.416). Coline won the 2017 European title and became the first French female to win the continental title on vault. Two years later she added silver and was part of the French team that won silver at the 2018 European Championships which was France's best European team finish ever. Ali Al Hitmi, President of the Qatar Gymnastics Federation said that the first day of the event was attended by HE Jassim bin Rashid Al Buenain,  Secretary General of the Qatar Olympic Committee, Morinari Watanabe, President of the International Gymnastics Federation and Dr Ehab Amin, President of the Egyptian Gymnastics Federation who lauded the level of the event. A total 26 countries have registered for this year's edition that was postponed last year due to the pandemic. For the first time ever in its history since 2008, the high-profile competition is held without fans due to the strict Covid19 protocols in place.

Doha Artistic Gymnastics World Cup to begin on Wednesday

Doha-The 2016 Olympic champion Eleftherios Petrounias of Greece and three-time Olympian Vanessa Ferrari of Italy are among those aiming to clinch tickets to this summer’s Tokyo Games at the Doha Artistic Gymnastics Apparatus World Cup, which will be held from Wednesday till Saturday at the Aspire Dome. The final major event in Artistic Gymnastics before the Olympic Games in Doha is the eighth and final stop on the 2018-2021 FIG Apparatus World Cup series, where top-ranked specialists on each apparatus have one last chance to lock down their places at the Games. The pressure is on for Petrounias, who did not qualify for Tokyo 2020 at the 2019 World Championships, leaving the Apparatus World Cup series as his only viable path to the Games. “I have to do the fight of my life,” the 30-year-old wrote on Instagram. “I have mixed emotions about it; there’s a lot of stress and scary pressure, but mainly anticipation for the fight.” The 2006 World All-Around champion Ferrari is in a similar position, battling teammate Lara Mori (ITA) for the Olympic qualification spot for Women’s Floor Exercise. “The Doha World Cup is upon us - this will be a very important month,” Ferrari commented on Instagram. Olympic qualifiers will be finalised following the event. To those already qualified to the Games, including 2019 World Still Rings champion Ibrahim Colak of Turkey and seven-time Olympian Oksana Chusovitina of Uzbekistan, the competition offers one last chance for routine refinement before Tokyo. And for athletes not aiming to land berths, Doha presents another opportunity to compete internationally ahead of the other big event in Japan this year: October’s Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Kitakyushu. The four-day event in Doha will be held without fans.  

Qatar's Ayoub El Idrissi qualifies for 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Doha- (QNA) - Team Qatar Judo star Ayoub El Idrissi, has officially qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which will be held in Japan from July 23 to August 8. Ayoub Al Idrissi qualified for the Olympics well after collecting 699 points thanks to the good results he obtained during his participation in international tournaments in 2020 and 2021, especially in the recent Grand Slam tournaments in Georgia, Turkey and Russia, and the World Championships in Hungary, which was held last week. El Idrissi has participated in many camps in Japan, Morocco, Algeria, Uzbekistan and France, and has encountered the best international players and trained with them under the supervision of his coaches, Mohamed Bouhdo and Hamid Chaalali. In a statement on this occasion Secretary General of the Qatar Taekwondo, Judo and Karate Federation, Eid Al-Muraikhi, expressed his happiness over the qualification of Qatar's Judo star El Idrissi for the Tokyo Olympics. Al Muraikhi said in a press statement that this qualification is an achievement for Qatari sports, the Qatar Olympic Committee and the Qatari Federation for their continuous support. QNA