NANJING: Rahma Al Dulaimi, the youngest member of the Qatari team at 15 years, had a respectable finish at the women’s all-around qualification at the second Youth Olympic Games yesterday.
At the Nanjing Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium, Dulaimi collected 47.600 points to get the 23rd place among 40 gymnasts who competed in the qualification rounds.
Russian Seda Tutkhalayan topped the points table and led 18 qualifiers with 53.650 points into the finals and Dulaimi’s performance was praiseworthy as she narrowly missed making it to four reserves.
Puerto Rica’s Paola Moreira Irizarry managed 0.200 of a point more than Dulaimi to get the honour of being among the best 22.
The women’s all-around final is scheduled on August 20, which will be followed by apparatus events.
Dulaimi’s best performance came in vault in which she scored 13.700 and earned a tight hug from her coach as well. She was 11th exercise, pulling off neat flips and somersaults, which earned her 12.150 points.
Najjar gets a strong finish Abdulrahman Al Najjar paid a heavy price of being in a tough group and lost all the three group league matches.
He also later was beaten by Singapore’s Jing Yuan Yin in a minor placing play-off as well.
After having already lost to Switzerland’s Elia Schmid, Hong Kong’s Hung Ka Tak scored an easy 3-0 victory when he won 11-7, 11-3, 11-5.
Najjar ended the group matches with a 0-3 loss to Croatian Tomislav Pucar, the eighth seed.
But the Qatari player troubled the rival a lot and forced him into making mistakes.
Eventually Najjar lost the 26-minute match by 5-11, 10-12, 9-11 closely.
Later in the day when the placing playoffs began, Najjar lost to Singaporean Yin 11-7, 11-7, 11-8.
Though he lost all the group matches, the strong way he played in the preliminary league, it should set him up well for the future events.
Today, Nadine Wohdan, the younger sister of Arab Games medals winner Shaden, will perform on trampoline which will take place in the evening on the third day of games.
Qadi will figure in the team event of show jumping.
Teaming up with Chinese, Saudi Arabian, Japanese and Kyrgyzstan riders, Qadi is good frame of mind and hopes to make the best use of the event ahead of the individual contest.
Meanwhile, Abdullah Zaid Al Sunaidi continued to have useful training before his 10m air rifle (60 shots) event tomorrow.
Talking after his work out, he said, “I’m ready for my event. I’m feeling confident of a good show as I’ve trained hard for which I want to thank the shooting federation and my coach.”
Sunaidi was third during the Asian Junior Championship, which was held in Kuwait earlier this year.
His coach Tatsiana is also optimistic about a good show by Sunaidi.
“Sunaidi completed his training well and is all set for his competition in the YOG,” he said before adding:
“We put him through some intensive work out and he finished it with flying colours. This has given us high hopes for a good result from Sunaidi.”
QOC
