Bahrain’s Maryam Hassani set for Tokyo Olympics

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahraini Maryam Hassani will be going for gold at the Tokyo Olympic Games later this month in the sport of shooting. Maryam is an experienced international athlete who started competing in 2012.

Shooting is one of the five sports in which Bahrain’s national delegation will be represented at the Games. The others are athletics, handball, boxing and swimming. Maryam will be the lone shooter for Bahrain at the Olympics.

The 27-year-old will be taking part in the women’s skeet competition. The qualifying round will be held on July 25, with the final round scheduled for the very next day.

Maryam is a right-hander and her right eye is her master eye. She is currently ranked 77th in the world under the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF).

She has plenty of experience competing at the highest levels of global shooting, including the ISSF World Cup and the ISSF World Championships.

Maryam also represented Bahrain at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, where she finished 16th in the women’s skeet event. She was the mixed skeet gold-medallist at the Islamic Solidarity Games, held in Baku in 2017, alongside teammate Hasan Mohamed.

In the sport of skeet shooting, participants use shotguns as they attempt to break clay targets mechanically flung into the air from two fixed stations at high speed, from a variety of angles. Maryam’s participation will mark the fifth straight Olympic Games in which Bahrain has taken part in the shooting.

In 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Mahmood Haji was the competitor, while in 2012 in London, Azza Al Qasmi represented Bahrain. Salman Zaman was the national team’s lone shooter at the 2008 Games in Beijing, and Khalid Mohamed took part in 2004 in Athens. Bahrain’s full delegation of athletes for Tokyo has still to be finalised, according to a Bahrain Olympic Committee official.

As reported in TDT earlier this week, the 17-member athletics team is already set. The final roster of the men’s handball squad will be determined soon, while Danis Latypov will be taking to the ring in the men’s super heavyweight division in boxing.

Bahrain also has a pair of swimmers set to compete in Tokyo. One male and one female athlete will be taking part, having earned their spots as wild cards.

The final selection of the pair has yet to be announced by the Bahrain Swimming Association. The Tokyo Games are scheduled to take place between July 23 and August 8. More than 200 nations are expected to take part, vying for medals in over 300 events across more than 30 sports.