With a leap of 2.36 metres in the high jump event at the Rio Olympics on Tuesday night, Mutaz Essa Barshim has stamped his mark on Qatar’s sporting history as the greatest Olympian the country has produced.
All of 24, Barshim bagged the silver medal behind Derek Drouin of Canada, who took gold by clearing 2.38m while Bohdan Bondarenko of Ukraine claimed bronze with a jump of 2.33m.
Barshim’s effort was an improvement on his bronze-winning performance as a 20-year-old at the London Games in 2012, and he now becomes the only sportsman from the country with two medals at the Olympics.
The athlete, who took to high jump as a 15-year-old, was no prodigy but was always considered blessed with enough potential to make a mark on the world stage provided he put his heart and soul into it.
That, however, was no problem as the young teen proved a coach’s delight at Aspire Academy, putting in the extra hours and adapting his slender frame to the rigours of the cut-throat world of international athletics.
By the time he was 17, Barshim was winning events at junior Asian events and became the junior world champion in 2010 to announce his arrival on the global stage.
Two years later, he was in London competing with accomplished seniors at the Olympics despite suffering from a painful back problem that caused doubts in his mind.
Barshim suffered the back injury early during the year in early 2012 and was to reveal later that he was not fully fit at the London Olympics. A stress fracture in the fifth (L5) Lumbar vertebrae was found to be the cause of the problem.
In an interview for the IAAF, Barshim had stated: “It started hurting bad before the (2012) World Indoor Championships and then I had to stop a bit. Before the Olympics, I had to stop again, but we have a really good sports centre in Doha and I also received treatment in Warsaw.”
After his Rio de Janeiro heroics, Barshim has already announced his intention to compete at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, but if he stays fit and healthy he can even extend his Olympic journey well until 2024 when he will be only 32, an age when many athletes are at the peak of their powers.
At an interaction with the media in Qatar a couple of years ago he had said that the biggest struggle he faces is maintaining his weight, saying he survives only on cornflakes for weeks on end.
But the boy who grew up “nothing special, like any kid in Qatar” has lived up to the promise shown by him and also to the expectations his country had from him. After a bronze in 2012 and a silver in 2016, isn’t it only logical for his fans to expect a gold in 2020?