Special Olympics 2018 will be held in the first week of July in Seattle. With very little time to go, everyone is preparing for it. However, the I X MENA Special Olympic games held at the NYUAD opened the world’s eyes towards a great athlete. Abdullah Al Tajer won gold medal in 50-meter freestyle, 25-meter breast stroke and relays. He won a total of 4 medals at the games.
This is not the first time Abdullah has shown such promising results.
Jamal Abdul Kader Nasser, who is the national team’s swimming coach for UAE and the club’s resident coach, coached Abdullah. He did so well that when the Special Olympics UAE committee was looking to register local athletes, he was one of the first choices. “I like swimming because I get gold,” said the 25-year-old athlete, who has been competing in the games since 2004. “Every day I want to win.”
Abdullah is known as the UAE’s golden swimmer for earning more than 10 gold medals in international swimming competitions.
Abdullah won two gold medals at those Games, held in Tunisia. He followed up with two golds and a silver at the fifth Special Olympics MENA Games in Dubai in 2006 and two golds at the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai, China in 2007. At the 2011 World Championships in Athens, Greece, he again won gold. So, it is right to say that he is a true athlete who has only improved his performance with time.
Abdullah wasn’t the only player who won medals at the games held at NYUAD. Khaled Al Barguthi, who played in the games for the first time, won a gold in the 50-meter freestyle and silver in the breaststroke. The young Omer Al Shami won a silver in the 50-meter butterfly and gold in the 4 x 25-meter relay. Bahrain’s Aysha Alsubei finished a close second while the Emirati sprinter Hamda Al Hosani won gold in the 100-meter race. Aysha had won the 200m race on Sunday with Hamda taking silver.
UAE swimmers showed promising performances and bagged quite a few medals but other countries like Sudan, Syria, Kuwait and Austria played well too. After returning to the games post a 10-year break, Sudanese athletes managed to bag 2 silvers and 3 bronzes. Participation of Syria athletes was uplifting, both for the families and the world and made everyone forget about its state for a split second. Syrian athlete Salman Sulaiman won four gold medals, Najma Al Amouri bagged two silvers and two bronzes in the dead lift, power-lifting squat and bench-press categories.
All in all, the I X MENA Special Olympic games, Abu Dhabi 2018 shed light on some rising stars as well as some old prominent stars. Be it countries or individuals, the games represented the true spirit of overcoming problems and disabilities to come out victorious, both literally and metaphorically.
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