Weightlifting runs in Fares Ibrahim’s blood. His father was a weightlifter, so are his brothers. “For me weightlifting is not just a sport. It’s really my family, my job, lifestyle and passion,” he says.
The passion with which he does his “job” was more than evident yesterday as he held his nerve in the wake of strong opposition to clinch a silver medal in the 94kg category at the Asian Games.
It was Qatar’s second medal in Indonesia after Hamad al-Marri won a bronze in shooting earlier in the week, and it lifted the mood in the camp following squash star Abdulla al-Tamimi’s heart-breaking exit in the quarter-finals on Friday.
Fares, who won a silver medal at the 2017 World Weightlifting Championships in Anaheim, USA, to announce his arrival on the global stage at the senior level while just 19, was one of the favourites for a medal here. He more than justified that tag with his outstanding display.
“Thanks to God I won the silver today. It’s hard to describe how happy I am right now. I wouldn’t be able to achieve this without the help and support of the Qatar Olympic Committee, my coach and the medical team,” Fares, the junior world champion in 2017, said after totalling 381 kilos to finish behind Iran’s Sohrab Moradi who aggregated 410.
His coach, of course is his father, Ibrahim Hassouna, a three-time Olympian, who introduced Fares to the sport when he was just 10.
The father-son duo follow a strict training regime. “The (coach and athlete) relationship at the beginning was tough. At first I had to wake him up to get into the training mode. Now Fares is doing exactly what I tell him to do. We eat and sleep and train at the same time,” Hassouna had said in an earlier interview.
“Our relationship is that of friends. I am not just his father, am his coach as well. I have been coaching him since he was 10 years old,” Hassouna said.
Fares’ total of 381 kilos was only one kilo more than that of the third-placed Sarat Sumpradit of Thailand, who finished with the bronze, indicating how tough the fight was for the silver.
The Qatari lifted 166 kilos in the snatch and had to settle for 215 kilos in the clean and jerk after twice failing to lift 222 kilos.
“I was confident throughout about winning a medal. Now that the Asian Games are out of the way, my total focus would be on winning the Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2020. The Olympic Games are the pinnacle for any sportsman, especially a weightlifter,” added Fares.
Iranian Moradi, who aced the competition yesterday, is the reigning Olympic and world champion, having also beaten Fares to the gold at the World Championships last year. He set a world record yesterday with his 189kg lift in snatch, beating the 188-kilo mark set in 1999 by Greece’s Akakios Kakiasvilis.
Moradi, who won the 94kg gold in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 , set new world records for clean and jerk (233kg) and total weight (417kg) at the World Championships in Anaheim. With the snatch record nailed yesterday, he now holds all three world records in his weight division. His total of 410 kilos yesterday was also a new Asian Games record.
The Iranian is enjoying a second fruitful innings in the sport. He was slapped with a two-year ban by the International Weightlifting Federation in 2013 after testing positive for the banned substance methadone.
“I don’t want to discuss that. That was in the past, let it stay in the past,” said the 30-year-old.
Fares Ibrahim (third from right) celebrates his silver medal with members of Team Qatar yesterday.
