Al-Ahram Weekly talks to Medhat Warda, Egypt's former basketball superstar For more than 15 years, Medhat Warda was an example of how to play great basketball and be a sportsman off the court as well. To all basketball players and fans, Warda was a talent difficult to find nowadays and a champion in every sense of the word, Abeer Anwar writes. Warda did not know he would end up as a basketball player. Born in November 1955 and brought up in Alexandria, Warda was a professional swimmer and a talented waterpolo player. "One day a friend, Ahmed Zinger, took me to watch the African basketball championship final in Alex Stadium," Warda recalled. It was 1970. "It was between Egypt and Tunisia and I saw Adel Sharaf, a player at the time and one of Egypt's best coaches today, pass the ball behind his back which led to the winning basket for Egypt. "The stadium was full of fans and they all cheered Sharaf hysterically. I fell in love with the game right then and there. "In waterpolo or swimming, if you are cheered on by two or three people, it's a miracle but in basketball, the hall was packed with supporters and as a young player, I wanted to feel people were behind me." Warda said fans have a great impact on a player. "They can spur him on but they can have a negative effect on his performance if they turn on him." Warda sat down with himself and weighed the picture. He thought playing basketball would be easy since he was used to controlling the ball in water which he believed was more difficult than on a court. He didn't spend too much time thinking. His father gave him LE2.25 with which he bought a basketball called Everlast. "I'll never forget it. It was my start and I still have it." Living in Shatbi, El-Ittihad club was just a stone's throw from the house. Warda trained alone for three months, then joined Al-Nasseria's secondary school basketball league. "At first the physical education teacher told me to go and look for another sport. This made me more stubborn and determined to stick with basketball." Warda kept training for three more months alone and the same teacher, after seeing him again, asked him to join the team. "You will help me win," the PE instructor said. "But he kept me on the bench and I kept training until one day, Ittihad coach Ahmed Amin included me in Ittihad's basketball team under 18." At the time, Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, one of the country's famous basketball coaches, had returned to Egypt and when he saw Warda put him on the senior team in February 1973. Exactly a year later, Warda joined the national team. "I entered the faculty of physical education although I could have gone to other faculties but for the sake of basketball. I wanted to reshape my body to fit basketball." As a player, Warda won the 1974 Arab and African championships and Egypt finished third in the Mediterranean Games for the first time in its history, beating Turkey . At 29, Warda received an offer to train the Omani team. "At the time, I was named the best player in Africa and I was also the captain of the All- Africa team. I decided to retire as a star so I agreed to train Oman for two years." When he returned, he said the itch to play was too strong. "I wanted to play again. I had missed it tremendously. "All my teammates were very happy with the decision and I played in the African championship in Cairo in 1987 and the Arab Games in Algeria." Egypt won both. "Then I played a little in the national league and said this was enough. I have to retire when I am a star." And so he did. But other clubs refused to accept Warda's decision. He received a number of offers from Ahli and Zamalek. Mohamed Hassan Helmi, Zamalek's president at the time, said "if Warda was playing on our team, we will keep the title forever." Mortagi, Ahli's president, asked Warda to join the club for LE8,000. "In 1977, it was a large sum of money but my father advised me to continue with Ittihad if I was going to continue playing because Alexandria fans supported me everywhere." Afterwards, Warda worked for nine years in Dubai, three of which as a basketball coach in Al-Was club and the rest as a businessman. Returning to Cairo, Warda opened Warda's Basketball Centre where he deals with young talented basketball players. Warda has two boys and two girls -- Ziyad, Amr, Sara and Farah. "Ziyad is following my footsteps in basketball. He calls himself 'the follower'. He plays under 16 in Ittihad and I think he'll be a star one day. "Amr practices basketball but his No 1 love is football. He's in Egypt's national team under 12 as a midfielder." As a board member of the Egyptian Basketball Federation, Warda has a lot of plans to improve the game but they are all locked up in drawers. "There is not enough money for anything except football. I scouted 12 basketball players over two metres tall from the governorates but there is no money to train them. "If we can gather 160 tall boys and girls and train them well, we'll have a very strong national team." Warda said Gezira was the only team that plays real basketball "because of its financial resources for the team and the players." As to his unforgettable moments, 1983 sticks out. "It was the quarter- finals against South Africa in the African championship in Cairo. "I scored the last basket in the last six seconds when it was 71-71 to end the match. I shook hands with President Mubarak in the stands. He told me, 'that was a great play. You're the reason we won."'
