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HomeSportsSquash participant’s transfer to UK displays Egypt’s athlete exodus

Squash participant’s transfer to UK displays Egypt’s athlete exodus

CAIRO: Egyptian squash participant Mohamed El-Shorbagy was once referred to as a traitor and a sellout when he introduced this month he had joined the English nationwide crew. But the athlete isn’t the primary Egyptian to compete below a international flag, with professionals pronouncing the selection illustrates a pervasive drawback of athletes feeling underpaid and under-equipped.

“There’s simplest soccer and a couple of crew sports activities” that garner enhance, Hossam Hamed, former wrestler and trainer of Egypt’s nationwide crew, advised AFP. Different athletes, in particular the ones in particular person sports activities, must care for “out of date laws” and “minimum bills, even after medals and world victories”. He says Egyptian athletes becoming a member of different nationwide groups are “rebelling towards a painful fact”.

Explaining his selection, El-Shorbagy stated “England gave me all of the enhance I wanted”, by contrast to his house nation, the place “no person paid him any thoughts” for years. Recently international quantity 3, the Alexandria local is one among Egypt’s maximum adorned squash avid gamers, spending 50 months as the sector primary in a rustic that persistently dominates the game on a world stage. 5 of the sector’s height 10 males athletes are Egyptian, along with el-Shorbagy, in addition to the highest 3 girls athletes.

Some way out of poverty

However the champion is a long way from the primary to industry within the Egyptian flag, with a historical past of athletes in weightlifting, wrestling, equestrian, boxing and handball doing the similar. In 2018, after butting heads with the Egyptian Wrestling Federation, wrestler Mahmoud Fawzy joined crew USA following a number of Arab and African gold medals. On the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Fares Hassouna gained one among Qatar’s first gold medals in weightlifting. After social media backlash in Egypt, his father set the document immediately.

Ibrahim Hassouna, himself an Egyptian weightlifting champion and previous trainer of the nationwide crew, defined that it was once he who had left the rustic after his personal conflict with the federation, and had educated his son in Qatar since he was once a kid. In each sports activities, says Fathi Zariq, former treasurer of the Weightlifting Federation, “athletes normally come from deficient households”. In a rustic the place two thirds of the inhabitants are living underneath or simply above the poverty line, recreation is usually a means out.

Weightlifters and wrestlers who get started coaching in barebones early life centres in low-income neighborhoods, Zariq defined, “glance to international nationalities in pursuit of cash and higher social standing”. “How can the praise for an Olympic gold medal be 1,000,000 kilos ($54,000), in any case the years of coaching and preparation that experience long gone in?” In Egypt, the place soccer reigns and Mohamed Salah wears the crown, different athletes are resentful. “In soccer, some avid gamers earn as much as 1,000,000 bucks a yr, with out even having to win a contest,” Zariq derided.

After retirement

Handball has observed an extraordinary reversal of the fashion, in line with Yasser Labib, former captain of the nationwide crew and head of the handball crew at Al-Ahly Membership, which at the side of its rival Zamalek dominate the African Champions League. Within the Nineties, he defined, they have been haemorrhaging avid gamers, with Egyptian athletes enjoying everywhere the sector apart from in Egypt.

“That is now not the case,” he advised AFP. “Salaries have higher, contracts have develop into extra skilled, and avid gamers now not need any other nationality, however simplest to play in Ecu leagues,” whilst last at the Egyptian nationwide crew. The important thing, he advised AFP, is to position an finish to the parochial quarrels inside of federations, and build up budget devoted to athletes. This is a tall order for the Egyptian executive, recently stuck between double-digit inflation and a crippling devaluation.

In 2019-2020, simplest $21.3 million was once earmarked through the federal government for all sports activities federations in a rustic with a 103-million-strong inhabitants, in line with legitimate figures. Against this, the price range in a rustic like France clocks in at round a thousand million bucks. However professionals say the answer can come from sponsors, despite the fact that enhance must be sustained. All too regularly, Hamed says, sponsors see a participant as “only a product they may be able to benefit off of for revenues or promoting, however once he’s injured, it’s everywhere.”

Amir Wagih, former squash champion and nationwide crew trainer, thinks enhance must proceed after athletes retire, together with via “task gives”. Squash avid gamers, versus weightlifters and wrestlers, normally hail from higher-income communities, educated in elite neighbourhood wearing golf equipment and leveraging their victories into scholarship alternatives at top-tier American and Ecu universities. Wagih says it’s not cash those athletes are pursuing of their international careers, however alternatives for “a greater long run after retirement” they shouldn’t have of their house nation. – AFP

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