TDT | Manama
Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com
Bahrain will be hoping to win a historic men’s handball gold medal at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China today.
The Saudi senior national team, aiming for its first Asiad title, will face defending champions Qatar at the Zhejiang Gongshang University Sports Center in the tournament final scheduled to start at 2pm Bahrain time.
The Nationals advanced to the championship game with a 30-28 victory over Japan in the semifinals on Tuesday.
Qatar qualified with a 29-24 victory over fellow Gulf nation Kuwait.
The gold medal showdown is a rematch of the final at the 2018 Asian Games held in Jakarta, Indonesia, where Bahrain were content with a silver medal.
They lost 27-32 in overtime, winning their second medal at the Asiad Games after winning bronze at the 2014 Incheon Games in South Korea.
The Bahrain squad is led by star players including skipper Hussein Al Sayyad, goalkeeper Mohamed Abdulhussein, Ali Eid, Mohamed Habib Nasser, Mohamed Habib Ahmed, Ali Mirza and Mohamed Mirza. I will stand and fight.
The rest of the team includes: Ahmed Fadel, Qasim Kambar, Hassan Madan, Mohamed Hamed Rabia, Hasan Mirza, Mahdi Saad, Mohamed Ali Abdulreda, Hesham Issa, Hassam Al Samahij is included.
Icelandic head coach Aaron Kristjansson joins Bahrain after being responsible for overseeing Bahrain’s World Championship success and historic first Olympic appearance in Tokyo, to name a few. I’m trying to lead you to the next big accomplishment.
Also today, the Bahraini quartet of Ahmed Madan, Saeed Ahmed Allawi, Jawad Mansour and Ahmed Nasser will compete in the men’s bicycle road race.
They will be part of 60 riders representing 19 countries who will compete over a total race distance of 207.7 kilometers. It is scheduled to start at 5am Bahrain time.
Elsewhere in Bahrain today, Mohamed Yusuf Abdali will begin his national team’s campaign in Jiu-Jitsu.
He will face Michael Bryant Tiu of the Philippines in the last 32 of the men’s under-69kg division.
Jiu-jitsu will be one of the last disciplines Bahrain will compete in on the final day of the Hangzhou Asiad, which concludes on Saturday.
The others are weightlifting and wrestling.
The only Bahraini in the weightlifting world is Gol Minassian, who won an impressive double medal at the 2023 World Weightlifting Championships. Meanwhile, the wrestling team includes Alibeg Alibegov, Magomed Rasul Asluyev, Magomed Sharipov, and Akhmed Tazhdinov, who just won the world championship in his weight class at the 2023 World Wrestling Championships in Belgrade last month.