Saudi Taekwondo Team Prepares in Turkey for 2024 Olympics

The Saudi national taekwondo team has arrived in Antalya, Turkey, to begin their latest training camp in preparation for the 2024 Olympic Games, scheduled to start in Paris on July 26.

This camp includes both male and female athletes, such as Donia Abu Taleb, the only Saudi athlete who has earned automatic qualification for the Olympics, along with Riyad Hamdi, Yousef Jaar, Abdullah Al-Mushrif, Abdulrahman Al-Shamrani, Zakria Ghali, and Ahmed bin Qasim.

Recently, the Saudi Arabian Taekwondo Federation appointed Russian coach Kurban Bogdaev, who successfully coached Tunisian athlete Mohammed Jendoubi to a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, to lead the national team.

The training camp in Turkey will run until July 7, after which the team will travel to South Korea to participate in the Chuncheon Korea Open International Taekwondo Championships.

Post-championships, the team will return to Saudi Arabia while Abu Taleb continues her individual training regimen for the Olympics.

Nasser Al-Qahtani, the director of the national team, confirmed that all team members had achieved the necessary levels of fitness and technical skill.

"Donia Abu Taleb will be following a different program to prepare her for the grand event, the Paris Olympics," he mentioned.

Abu Taleb, the first Saudi woman to achieve direct qualification for the Olympics, recently reached another historic milestone by breaking into the top five in the official world rankings for her under-53-kilogram weight category.

She secured a gold medal at the Asian Games and is now ranked fourth globally, making her the first martial artist from Saudi Arabia to achieve such a ranking.

In a recent training session held in Abha and organized by the Saudi Taekwondo Federation, the Saudi team trained alongside athletes from Russia, Uzbekistan, Palestine, Kazakhstan, and Gabon.

Source: arabnews

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