Sport | Other Sports
Salem hopes hard work will pay off
Mubarak Salem faces the biggest moment of his swimming career tomorrow. The 19-year-old will dive into the deep end at the Asian Games short-course breaststroke event, hoping that months of hard work pay off.
- By Sarah Tregoning, Staff Reporter
- Published: 23:35 May 3, 2009
- The UAE has two representatives competing in swimming events, Mubarak Salem (left) and Obaid Al Jesmi.
- Image Credit: Karl Jeffs/Gulf News
Dubai: Mubarak Salem faces the biggest moment of his swimming career tomorrow. The 19-year-old will dive into the deep end at the Asian Games short-course breaststroke event, hoping that months of hard work pay off.
Taking a break during his penultimate training session at Hamdan Aquatics Centre in Doha, he said: "I'm very excited. This is my biggest competition to date. It's the first Asian competition for me because in the past I have only entered Gulf events."
Salem and his only other team mate, 24-year-old Obaid Al Jesmi, recently returned from a month-long training camp in Australia.
There the boys trained with elite swimmers in state-of-the-art facilities. And while Salem may be a small fish in a big pond in Doha, his coach in Australia saw so much potential in the youngster, that he has invited him and Al Jesmi back to join his team for altitude training after the Asian Games.
It's a big step for a boy who preferred football and only started swimming as a child because he lived next door to a swimming coach.
"Australia was very beneficial for the boys," said UAE coach Greg Hodge. "In the UAE they are at the absolute top of the tree; they are the best swimmers in the country. In Australia they were training with international swimmers and were challenged at each and every training session."
Al Jesmi, who according to Hodge is the "old man" of swimming in the UAE, says that their performance at the Asian Games this week is very important, both to the athletes personally and to the UAE.
"We have worked very hard for this," said freestyler Al Jesmi, who represented his country at the Athens Olympics. "It's a very big deal and we have pushed ourselves as much as we could to prepare for this event.
"If we do something here, something worth taking notice of, then we hope that everybody back home would see that and see that swimming should take more of a priority."
Salem and Al Jesmi are at a disadvantage. In the UAE they train just two or three times a week in a multitude of different pools - in Australia they were in a 50-metre pool twice a day.
"Swimming in the UAE needs more support, be it from the authorities or from corporations," explained Hodge. "It is essential that we take our swimmers to training camps and there are also three or four boys back in the UAE who would really benefit from more investment."
Share this article
More from Other sports
More from Sport
Popular in Sport
-
Pictures
Kings of the court
The world's top tennis players who will battle in the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals
Sport Editor's choice
-
India trounce Sri Lanka to record 100th Test win
It was also India's biggest margin of victory over Sri Lanka surpassing their previous best
-
UAE take on Afghanistan in crucial clash
Both teams have equal points going into crucial match in Abu Dhabi
-
Al Qamzi comes second in Qatar Grand Prix
Emirati shadows winner Cappellini to finish and regains seven-point lead in 2009 UIM F1 Drivers' Championship
