Scottish running legend Liz McColgan opened a “Beat the Blockade” games in Qatar for British schoolchildren prevented from travelling abroad by a political row.
The former British Olympic medal winner, from Dundee, stepped in when hundreds of school children were unable to travel to Dubai for the annual British Schools in the Middle East (BSME) championships earlier this month.
Last June a Saudi-led alliance, including the United Arab Emirates, launched a diplomatic and transport boycott of Qatar, accusing the tiny Gulf state of cosying up to Iran and supporting terrorism, which Doha denies.
The blockade meant the school children were unable to fly to Dubai and instead would have had to travel via a neutral country such as Oman, which would have been too difficult.
But so that the youngsters did not miss out, organisers in Qatar staged an event for 800 expat school children at the country’s famous Aspire Academy to compete in basketball, football, athletics and swimming.
Liz, 53, who won silver in the 10,000 metres at the 1988 Olympics and gold at the 1991 World Championships, is working in Qatar to help young people participate and develop in athletics.
She said: “The Qatar games was a great opportunity for the school children in Qatar to experience different sports and competition, even though the blockade stopped them from travelling to do so.
“In Doha we have some excellent sporting kids so we need to now provide higher level competition so hopefully the Qatar games is something we can build in for the future.”
To inspire the schoolchildren organisers used the opening to show TV footage of Liz winning the 1991 race in Tokyo.
Among the under-13 competitors was swimmer Angus Spencer who talked about what he had enjoyed most about the inaugural British International Schools Qatar games.
He said: “Working with my team, playing with my mates and seeing how fun it is to actually do sport with other teams.”
Basketball player Ali Adam said: “It’s been exciting but really competitive as well.” And Kadi Jones, who won a gold in the swimming, said: “I got to compete with other people and to swim with my friends.”
It was the first time in more than 20 years that Qatar has been unable to compete in the BSME games which include countries from all over the Middle East including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt.
Organiser Terry McGuire, of the Doha British School, said: “It was a fantastic event and everyone said so afterwards. It shows that out of the adversity of the Gulf crisis and blockade comes the opportunity for us to do our own thing. I called it the ‘Beat the Blockade’ games.
“I just said: ‘Why don’t we organise our own games?’ The great thing is that we were able to have 800 children from 13 schools at the games in Qatar whereas if we’d gone to Dubai only about 100 children would have gone because that’s all we could have taken.”
Talking about the blockade by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, Terry, originally from Liverpool, added: “There’s obviously long-term enmity between some of these states but there’s also a lot of jealousy over Qatar getting the World Cup, and they’re doing their best to get it taken off them. I think Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are thinking: ‘Why have they got it and we haven’t?”
In 2010 Qatar won the Fifa vote to host the 2022 World Cup, the first country in the Middle East to do so.
