UAE athletes honoured for Asian show

UAE’s new star, Naseeb Al Salamein, who has a season best 10.17 in the men’s 100m, will join Alia and Bethlem for the World Championships Athletics at 2008 Summer Olympics venue.

UAE athletes Alia Saeed Mohammad, Bethlem Desalegn Alia Al Hamadi and Fatima Al Hosani with physical fitness trainers, and UAE Athletics Federation and General Authority of Youth & Sports Welfare officials in Dubai. — KT photo by Mustafa

Dubai — Alia Saeed Mohammad and Bethlem Desalegn along with some members of the national squad were honoured at a function organised by the UAE Athletics Federation at the General Authority of Youth & Sports Welfare auditorium in Dubai on Thursday.

UAE’s new star, Naseeb Al Salamein, who has a season best 10.17 in the men’s 100m, will join Alia and Bethlem for the World Championships Athletics at 2008 Summer Olympics venue at the ‘Birds Nest’ Beijing National Stadium in late August.

Promising high jumper, school year final student Alia Al Hamadi, with personal bests of 1.60m plus this year, said: “Getting to take part in international meets and building up a temperament to handle big pressure situations are my next goals. After some time we have to move forward from the local and Arab meets to gain maturity for the higher platforms.”

Bethlem said: “We have reached a stage where it is all about fine tuning, physical fitness for high performance levels, the diet for and regular participation in GP level meetings are the main concerns.

“Our coaches and body tuning experts have done a lot to help us and we now move towards another try at the worlds before getting into further fitness regimes in time for the Rio Olympics.”

Alia said: “After short rest following our good show at the Asian Athletics Championships where after two years we kept our consistency levels at a high, we now move into another grade where as you are aware, competition is all about who does what on a particular day as most of us at the level have the basics all in place.”

Also attending the function was discus thrower Fatima Al Hosani. Ahmed Al Kamali, president of the UAE Athletics Federation and a former national long distance runner himself, said: “Alia and Bethlem will be there as usual and we have the high standards set in men’s sprints through the representation of Naseeb Al Salameini whose military duties has kept him from attending the function today. His best of 10.17 this season speaks well for our future. If he can at least proceed into the final phases is by itself a big credit for the UAE.”

Alia and Bethlem won four medals for the UAE with Alia retaining her 10,000m gold in meet record time and went on to win silver in the 5,000m behind Bethlem at the Wuhan Asian meet during the weekend.

Bethlem won a grand double gold when she clinched the 1,500m to retain her title she won in the previous Asian meet of 2013 in Pune, India, where the UAE won three medals, again courtesy the golden girls.