The UAE National Olympic Committee is not expecting any miracles from its young sprinter Omar Juma Bilal Al Salfa. Neither is UAE national team coach Vasko Dimov Anguelov.
While Al Salfa, who has impressed on the junior circuit in recent youth meetings, also acknowledges that Beijing will be all about discovering what separates the men from the boys, he recognises the need to return from China with his head held high.
There is no mistaking the intent in his tone as he tells XPRESS a day before leaving for Beijing: "I must do something good at this Olympics. If I don't, I will not be happy."
Al Salfa has been a busy man on the track since last September participating in as many as 13 championships in that period. He finished seventh in the 200 metres at the recent IAAF World Junior Championships in Poland before staying on for a six-week training camp with Anguelov prior to heading off for the big one.
"This year everything has gone well for me. So I hope that can continue in the Olympics," he says.
The 18-year-old who has clocked a personal best of 20.94 seconds in the 200 metres has kept his targets simple. "I'm going for the experience. But I want to try and reach the second round and I want to break my record. That's enough for now." That and a picture with his idol, the American sprinter Tyson Gay, would leave him ecstatic.
But Anguelov, who was the Bulgarian national team coach for 25 years before arriving in the UAE in 2003, believes it will be a remarkable achievement if his ward goes where no UAE athlete has gone before. "I will be honest. It will be very difficult for him to make the second round," says the Bulgarian. "That would mean he is among the top 32 [200 metre] runners in the world. So I'll be happy if he beats his personal best and breaks the UAE record. If he makes the second round, this is fantastic because nobody from the Emirates has reached the second round.
"He is in the top eight of the world at the junior level. But now it gets difficult for him. He will be running with the best."
