Maryam Yusuf Jamal of Bahrain celebrates winning the gold medal in the 1500m Final (© Getty Images)
World 1500m champion Maryam Yusuf Jamal will lead the Kingdom of Bahrain’s strong team of four athletes selected for the 12th IAAF World Indoor Championships in Valencia, Spain (7-9 March 2008).
The team announced by the Bahrain Athletics Association (BAA) also includes the 2005 800m/1500m double champion and 2004 World indoor 800m silver medallist Rashid Ramzi, the 2006 IAAF World Cup 800m winner Yusuf Saad Kamel, and 2006 World junior 1500m silver medallist Monsoor Ali Belal.
WOMEN- Jamal is the sole medal hope
But the undoubted star of this small, but strong Bahrain team is Maryam Yusuf Jamal who is creating history for this small Middle East nation whenever she steps on the track. Last summer, the former Ethiopian became her country’s first ever woman’s World champion when taking an impressive victory in the 1500m final over Russian race favourite Yelena Soboleva.
“At the beginning of the season, I focus mainly on training,” she said of her limited competitive appearance this year. “Even when I do races, I run them as part of my competition. I train to peak towards the main championships. So I am not worried who runs well at the beginning of the season.”
While Soboleva has competed with remarkable success in this indoor season (smashing her own World 1500m indoor mark and setting a new national record over the 800m at the Russian Indoor Championships), the 24-year old was limited to a solitary indoor appearance in the GE Galan meet in Stockholm, Sweden where she beat Ethiopia’s All-African Games 1500m champion Gelete Burka.
Jamal will also have an added incentive to do well in Valencia. Two years ago, she went into the championships in Moscow after running an impressive World indoor lead in Valencia. But after missing two weeks of her training prior to the world indoors because of bad weather conditions at her training base in Lausanne, she could only manage bronze in a highly tactical battle with Soboleva.
In a bid not to repeat that mistake, Jamal switched her winter training location to her birth country Ethiopia this year and has relocated to Europe to complete her preparations for Valencia.
MEN- Ramzi’s pedigree and Belal’s form
Jamal will be Bahrain’s only woman representative in Valencia, but with three top runners competing over the middle distance events, Bahrain not will be short of potential male medal contenders as well.
The trio will be led by the reigning World 1500m silver medallist Rashid Ramzi who has a proven knack of creating surprises during major championships. The 27-year old former Moroccan stole the headlines nearly three years ago with a historic 800m/1500m double at the 10th IAAF World Championships in Helsinki, Finland.
Since then, he has shown signs of recapturing his major championship form losing narrowly to Bernard Lagat in Osaka last year and running a personal best of 3:29.14 outdoors for the 1500m in 2006.
Valencia will mark his second appearance in the World Indoor Championships after his encouraging silver medal behind South Africa’s Mbuluani Mulaudzi in Budapest four years ago.
He will be joined in the 1500m by reigning World Indoor Championships bronze medallist Mansoor Ali Belal who will be hoping to culminate a successful indoor season with a podium finish in Valencia.
The 20-year-old is a former World Youth champion and World Junior bronze medallist at the 1500m and finished a close second over the 1000m behind Sudan’s Abubaker Khamis Kaki in Gent last Sunday.
The 2006 IAAF World Cup 800m champion Yusuf Saad Kamel completes Bahrain’s line-up for Valencia. The 24-year-old, who is Jamal’s training partner and coached by her husband Tareq Yacoob Sabt, is fresh from winning his first Asian indoor 800m title in Doha two weeks ago and has an indoor personal best of 1:47.16 to his name.
Bahrain team for Valencia
MEN’s 800m: Yusuf Saad Kamel
MEN’s 1500m: Rashid Ramzi, Mansoor Ali Belal
WOMEN’s 1500m: Maryam Yusuf Jamal
Elshadai Negash for the IAAF
