Bahrain seeks maiden medal
Manama : Bahrain’s campaign at the Fourth edition of the Islamic Solidarity Games gets officially underway today in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Maryam Hassani, Fatema Nasralla and Latifa Al Hadi will spearhead Bahrain at the women’s skeet qualifying round today at Baku Shooting Centre from 8am onwards (Bahrain time). The trio completed their training yesterday under Australian coach Valeriy Timokhin.
There are 11 shooters for the inaugural event of the shooting competition, representing Qatar, Turkey, Bahrain and host nation Azerbaijan.
Following today’s contest, the men’s event will follow tomorrow when Bahrain’s trio –Hasan Mohamed, Naser Khalaf and Tammar Al Watt line up with other regional shooting participants in the skeet qualifying round.
Meanwhile, Bahrain’s world record holder Ruth Jebet beat her Kenyan arch-rival Hyvin Kiyeng en route to set the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase meet record at the Shanghai Diamond League.
Jebet was outraced by Kiyeng in the Diamond League opener in Doha last week. But this time the Bahraini tasted a sweep revenge as she built up a comfortable lead after 2,000m and hit the line in style in nine minutes and 4.78 seconds, smashing the meet record of 9:07.42 set by defending champion Kiyeng in Shanghai 12 months ago.
Kiyeng finished second in 9:06.72 while Celliphine Chespol, also from Kenya, took the third place in 9:07.08.
This edition of the games, which continues until May 22, will also see Bahrain compete in two more sports – athletics and wrestling.
Turkey is presently leading the medal table with 30 medals, followed by Azerbaijan (24), Indonesia (150 and Algeria (9).
Indonesia is the defending champions with 104 medals, including 36 gold, while Saudi Arabia were the overall winners of the first edition held in Riyadh with 60 medals, including 24 gold.
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