The opening ceremony of the ninth All-Africa Games began in Algeria yesterday in the presence of the nation's head of state and top officials. Inas Mazhar was there Though the opening ceremony of the All-African Games took place yesterday, the football tournament started a day before, and the Egyptian team was scheduled to take on the hosts Algeria in the opener. This year's All-Africa Games will be taking place from 11 to 23 July. The first batch of the Egyptian delegation arrived in Algeria on Sunday headed by the secretary- general of the National Olympic Committee Khaled Zein. The 105- member delegation consisted of teams in football, basketball, table tennis, boxing and events for the handicapped, in addition to six doctors, four NOC administrators and five male and female youths who will be taking part in the African youth camp to be held on the sidelines of the All-Africa Games. The Egyptian delegation was joined on the same plane by the first group of South Africans who are similar in number to the Egyptian delegation. Egypt has one of the biggest participating delegations in this, the ninth edition of the event, after the host nation. The 541-person team includes, among others, 256 male athletes, 118 female athletes, 114 officials and administrators and 11 referees. They will be taking part in 26 sports, three of which are for the handicapped. The Egyptians will be travelling to Algeria in five groups. The second group arrived two days ago, and included 23 swimmers, 15 representing the sailing team, 28 from fencing and 16 in judo. They will start competing today. The third group, which includes chess, badminton, handball, cycling, tennis and shooting, start playing Saturday. The fourth group is scheduled to arrive today -- weightlifting, fencing, wrestling, karate, volleyball, handicapped basketball and handicapped ring ball. The last Egyptian delegation is scheduled to arrive on Sunday 15 July comprising athletics, taekwondo, gymnastics and rowing. The Egyptians have high hopes of maintaining African supremacy. Egypt has participated in all previous eight editions of the Games and came first five times: in Brazzaville 1965, Lagos 1973, Nairobi 1978, Cairo 1991 and Abuja 2003. The Egyptians were runners-up in Harare 1995 and third in Johannesburg in 1999. The third edition of the Games were also held in Algeria in 1978 but Egypt was forced to withdraw six days after it began, after the soccer team was attacked by Libyan fans. Egypt's prime minister, then Mamdouh Salem, gave the orders that the Egyptian delegation returns to Cairo. According to Zein, the Egyptians are determined to get first place "as always. We are one of the biggest delegations and we are the champions of most of these sports, so it is only normal that we should be winners unless something goes wrong. The NOC has made sure that all the 23 federations are well prepared. We have provided them with everything they need -- the budget, training camps, international competitions and friendly matches." The All-Africa Games was the brainchild of Pierre de Coubertin who was instrumental in reviving the modern Olympic Games. However, his concept of an all-African sporting event was ahead of its time in a colonially controlled Africa and the idea only began to materialise some four decades later. The first All-Africa Games was held in 1965 in Brazzaville in the Congo and event organisers have never looked back, despite the fact that the second edition of the Games was disrupted by a military coup. In the beginning, it was only the three most sports advanced African countries that captured the spotlight -- Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa. However the early domination of the Games by a few countries started changing when a number of other African countries began to improve technically. In order for a country to compete it must be from the African continent. Because many of the competing countries have suffered economic and governmental setbacks, the Pan-African Games give competing countries a chance to showcase their sports talent under common rules and international judging standards. The ninth edition of the Games will be staging athletics, badminton, basketball, chess, football, gymnastics, hockey, karate, swimming, taekwondo, volleyball, wrestling and weightlifting. Baseball, softball and field hockey have been eliminated due to lack of facilities in the host city.
