Importing athletes common practice in Qatar

DOHA, Qatar – Three Qatari men sit in the stands at the Asian Games, chatting about athletes representing their country. One says to the others: “Qatari sports-woman, Chen Zhu.”

The three burst into laughter.

A chess player, the Chinese-born Chen is not the only foreigner representing Qatar in the Asian Games, being held for the first time in an Arab country.

More than a dozen athletes who have traded their talent for citizenship and cash from this oil-rich Gulf state are competing here under the flag of Qatar, the host nation.

So far only one of them has won a medal for Qatar, which had three silver and two bronze medals overall in the first six days of competition.

Salem Jaber, formerly known as Yani Marchokov, on Wednesday won the silver medal for Qatar in the heaviest weightlifting division.

When asked by reporters to bring the medalist for an interview, one of his handlers replied that Jaber “can only speak Bulgarian and some Russian.” Told that there is a translator from Russian to English, the organizer later said the weightlifter did not want to speak.

Qatar paid $1 million to the Bulgarian weightlifting federation for eight athletes in 1999, according to reports. The original deal was that the weightlifters were to keep their given names. But most were given Arabic names almost immediately.

It’s not only Bulgarian and Chinese. There are handfuls of athletes from Kenya, as well as a soccer player from Uruguay, playing for Qatar.

But such imports are not new for the Gulf state.

The country won its first major medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics courtesy of Somali-born runner Mohammed Suleiman, who came third in the 1,500 meters.

Weightlifter Saif Saeed Asaad, formerly known as Angel Popov, won the second bronze medal for Qatar at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

“I came here to win a medal. It doesn’t matter what medal. I hope this will make me a champion for all the youth of Qatar,” he said at the time.

Asaad did not win a medal in Doha. Saif Saeed Shaheen, the world record holder in the 3,000 steeplechase, withdrew because of an Achilles tendon injury. Shaheen was born in Kenya but has won two world championship titles for Qatar.

The International Association of Athletics Federation, at its council meeting in Doha last year, ruled that athletes must wait for three years from the time they were granted a citizenship to represent an adopted country.

Under the old rules, an athlete could compete for an adopted homeland three years after competing for another, regardless of when the new passport was issued.