Egypt's only participant in taekwondo finished fifth in her first ever Olympics, reports Ghada Abdel-Kader In Beijing, in the preliminary taekwondo round of 16, Norwegian world champion Nina Solheim defeated Egyptian Noha Safwat 9-3 in the women +67kg category. In the repechage (athletes who were knocked out by the finalists and building brackets to determine third place), Safwat beat Malaysian champion Che Chew Chan 5-1 but British world champion Sarah Stevenson eventually won the bronze medal by overwhelming Safwat with a 5-1 victory. Safwat said it all had to do with experience. "This was my first time to participate in the Olympics. I was a little bit unnerved and I didn't give all I have. "I hope in 2012 I bring a medal for Egypt," Safwat told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Although Safwat had three tough matches she took fifth place, which is a great achievement." said Ahmed El-Fouli, president of the Egyptian Taekwondo Federation (ETF) and WTF (World Taekwondo Federation) vice-president. Safwat, 21, is in her fourth year in the faculty of engineering in the Maritime Academy of Sciences and Technology. "I dropped out of this semester for the sake of the Olympics. I was traveling and had no time to study." Before the Olympics, she trained in Korea, and won the silver medal in the Azerbaijan International Championship in Baku. Safwat has been playing taekwondo for 16 years. At age seven she entered a championship and has not looked back since. "I won a bronze medal. I began to love it." Safwat wears the hijab but El-Fouli does not consider that a hindrance. "The world thinks that Islamic countries do not encourage female sports. On the contrary," said El-Fouli, pointing out that Safwat was the first Arab woman to take second place in the WTF World Junior Championship in 2008. He also cited the WTF African qualification tournament in 2007 in which Safwat finished first in the over 67kg category. The WTF African qualifications take the top two athletes from each of the eight Olympic weight categories, totaling 16. Safwat did not have a wild card for the Olympics. Niger and the Emirates had two for the women and Afghanistan in the men's. Wild cards are reserved for countries that are new to the sport in an attempt to further broaden participation. President Hosni Mubarak ordered the formation of a fact-finding committee to find out what went wrong in Beijing, in which Egypt picked up just one bronze. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif formed the committee led by Minister of State for Legal Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs Mufid Shehab, to compare the results of the team's performance with its targeted goals. "It was a reasonable decision but the evaluation shouldn't concentrate just on the Olympics but on the work as whole starting from 2004, El-Fouli said." He added, "I believe that some federations did their best while others appeared careless. Some federations were unlucky, like wrestling, taekwondo, weightlifting and the modern pentathlon." Concerning the ETF plan for London 2012, El-Fouli said that next month, elections will choose a new administrative ETF board "to complete the federation's mission." A successful federation, he added, works as a complete network, which includes discovering talent. Taekwondo has become hugely popular in Egypt with 50,000 men and women officially registered. The ETF has branches covering all Egypt's governorates from Alexandria to Aswan. Still, the numbers could rise. "The solution to the small number of international champions in Egypt is to look into the armed forces, police, schools and universities. These are the factories for international champions," El-Fouli told the Weekly The WTF's policy is to establish specialised centres on the five continents. There were two in Africa, El-Fouli made them five, one in Egypt and one in South Africa. The locations of the remaining centres are yet to be decided. The governor of Alexandria has offered a plot of land for the Egypt project. The centre will be under the supervision of WTF. It will be a small academy for coaches, players, referees and medical personnel. Founded in 1978, ETF's first president of was Abdel-Karim Darwish, former deputy minister of the interior and founder of the Police Academy. Egypt was the first African, Arab and Francophone country to have a federation. In the beginning, taekwondo was not featured in the Olympics. It was a demonstration sport in Seoul 1988 and Barcelona 1992 before becoming an official medal sport in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. In Sydney, Egyptians Yehya Allam and Talaat Mabrouk failed to secure any medals, but in Athens 2004, Tamer Salah won the bronze medal in the under 58 kg category. It was the first Olympic medal for the ETF. Hopefully, it won't be the last.
