The Summer XXX Games were officially declared open on July 27 by Queen Elizabeth II where young athletes received the honor of lighting the London Olympic
flame in a spectacular ceremony, called the ‘The Isles of Wonder’, that was designed and coordinated by Danny Boyle, the Oscar-winning director
of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. The whole idea that showed the British history from Shakespeare till 2012 passing by the industry revolution and showing Britain’s numerous cultural achievements, coasted the British organizers 27 million pound which equal 42.5 million dollar.
During
the past two weeks, over 10,000 athletes from all over the globe
competed for Olympic medals in the stadiums of London and other UK
cities, and the closing ceremony scheduled for August 12. But the flame will not extinguish before the end of the Paralympic games that will start on the 29th of August and end on 9 September.
For the summer Olympic Games of London 2012, 10 Athletes represented Lebanon:
Saturday 28 July, Mona Shaito won her first match vs Egypt in Women's Individual Foil in 7-6, then played vs Elisa Di Francisca from Italy the world champion and lost 2-15. Tvine Moumjoghlian lost her first match in Table Tennis - Women's Singles vs Cameroon in 4-0 (11-6, 11-4, 11-6, 11-2). Wael Kobrosly ended forth in his heat with 1:07.06 in Men's 100m Breaststroke and couldn't qualify for the semi-finals.
On the 31st of July, two young Lebanese athletes had to compete: Zain Shaito in Men's Individual Foil in fencing and the youngest athlete in the Lebanese team Karen Chammas in judo women's -63kg. Zain lost 2-15 against the Chinese Zhu in the Round of 64. Karen Chammas lost in the round of 32 against a woman who serves the navy in Netherlands and who is 33 years old!! The road is still long for the young athletes, we should mention that the oldest athlete representing Lebanon is Gretta Taslakian aged 26 only!
On the 2nd of August, at the swimming pool in London, Katya Bachrouch did an amazing race finishing 2nd in her heats clocking a beautiful 8:35.88 on 800m Freestyle! She's not qualified for the finals but she scored a new Personnal Best!! Her qualifying time was 8:44.50 that she did at the Arab Games in December 2011!!
On August 4, it was Ray Bassil turn to take part in the Olympics in Women's Trap in Shooting. She took 18th place in the qualification scoring 64 over 75 shots: 22 over 25 in the 1st round, 22 over 25 the second and 20 over 25 in the 3rd and last round. She was 6 shots away from the 6th qualifiers for the final.
Our track and field athletes couldn't make it to the semi-finals, Gretta Taslakian ran the 200m in 24.49s, and Ahmad Hazer the 110m Hurdles in 14.82 seconds. We hope that from now on, a new athletics team will do the standards so we can have more than 2 athletes representing the Lebanese track and field in Rio Dejenero in 2016, and of course we hope to see a better preparation from the government and federation for these athletes to help them reach their goal and not only expect results! In the end, the athlete is representing his country not himself to the world! A plan for these 4 years should be done right now after these Games and not wait for 2016 to start to think about it..
Andrea Paoli won her first match vs a Cuban 4-2! Easy win for the Lebanese, but unfortunately she had to face the number 1 in the world, the Chinese Taipei in the quarter finals and lost 5-2! Andrea Paoli did an amazing achievement to be in the quarterfinals but she could go further if she didn't face this strong woman early. We should mention that Paoli is the 8th in the world and she is still 20!! We look up to Rio De Janeiro in 2016.
The Lebanese athletes are all done, so we will be posting another article when the games are done, to see how can we, as Lebanese, prepare for Rio De Janeiro and be able to win the fifth Olympic medal for our country. What plan should be done? When we should start preparing? Who will be the future athletes representing Lebanon? And of course how we should invest in sports? A lot of questions that flow in your mind.. we will try to find answers, to see how other countries prepare for the games and compare!
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