Bahrainis set for Olympic qualifiers

TDT | Manama    

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain named yesterday their final 19-player senior men’s national handball team that will be competing in the Asian Men’s Qualification tournament for a place at the Paris Olympic Games 2024.

The qualifiers are set to be held from Wednesday to 28 October in Doha, Qatar, with the participation of 11 countries vying for just one coveted spot in the men’s handball tournament at the Olympics.

The squad list was announced yesterday by the Bahrain Handball Association (BHA) ahead of the team’s departure for the Qatari capital today.

A majority of the squad is coming back from their recent silver medal-winning campaign at the Hangzhou Asian Games earlier this month.

Those players include skipper Hussain Al Sayyad, Mohammed Abdulhussain, Ali Eid, Mohammed Habib Nasser, Mohammed Habib Ahmed, Ali Mirza, Mohammed Mirza, Ahmed Fadhel, Qassim Qambar, Hassan Madan, Mohammed Hameed Rabia, Hasan Mirza, Mahdi Saad, Hesham Issa and Hassam Al Samaheeji; while four new additions are Hassan Shehab, Mujtaba Al Zaimour, Jassim Khamis and Ahmed Redha.

The Bahrainis are coached by Icelandic tactician Aron Kristjansson, who guided Bahrain to the Kingdom’s first-ever Olympic men’s handball participation at the Tokyo Games in 2021.

It was also the first time in history that Bahrain qualified for any team sport at the Olympics.

Kristjansson will be aiming for a repeat success this time around. Bahrain are in Group B for the qualifying competition’s preliminary stage along with Iran, Kuwait, Japan and Kazakhstan.

Group A features Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, the UAE, India and China. The Bahrainis begin their campaign in Doha against Kazakhstan on Wednesday and then face off with Japan Thursday, after which there will be a rest day.

They return to action only on Sunday next week against Kuwait, and then after another rest day, complete the preliminaries against Iran on 24 October.

Following the single round-robin, only the top two teams from the two groups advance to the semi-finals, which are scheduled for 26 October.

The final and game for third place will then be held on 28 October.

The runners-up from the Doha qualifiers will get one more chance to book their tickets to Paris but must compete against other top handball nations from around the world in one of the three Olympic qualifying events.

At the Paris Olympiad, there will be 12 teams participating in men’s handball.

France are in the fray as the host nation, as are reigning world champions Denmark.

One spot apiece will then be earned from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia; and then the final six will be won in the 2024 IHF Men’s Olympic Qualification Tournaments, set to be held in March of next year with 12 national teams in the fray.