Lebanon at 2008 Beijing Olympics – Guide to Lebanon’s athletes, games and history at 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics

Athletes at the Beijing Olympics: 6

Number of Sports competing in at Beijing Olympics: 4

Medals at 2008 Beijing Olympics: 0

Lebanon’s Olympic Playbook

Ravaged by war and political instability for most of the last 30 years,
tiny Lebanon has nevertheless managed to attend every summer Olympics
but one since 1948. In 1956, Lebanon joined Iraq and Egypt in a boycott of the games in Melbourne, Australia, to protest Israel’s occupation of the Sinai following the 1956 Suez crisis and war.

Through those years Lebanon managed to take home four medals—two silver
and two bronze. Khalil Taha and Zakaria Chibab were the country’s first
heroes, winning bronze and silver in wrestling at the 1952 Helsinki
games. Middleweight weighlifter Mohamed Traboulsi got the silver at the
1972 Munich games, lifting up 472.5kg. And in Moscow in 1980, Hassan
Bchara got a bronze in wrestling. (Lebanon would have most likely
joined 61 other countries in the boycott of the 1980 games,
but Lebanon wasn’t making its own decisions at the time. It was under
Syrian occupation, and Syria was a client state of the old Soviet
Union).

In Beijing, Lebanon’s hopes rest on the shoulders, legs and eyesights
of six athletes, two of them women, including the broad-smiling Gretta
Teslakian (whose name echoes Lebanon’s Armenian heritage). Despite
injuries in the last few months, and the lack of proper training
facilities in Lebanon, she’ll be running the 200m event.

“We feel down because we feel we can do more, but there is a lack of
training facilities. Competing in the Olympics is something very big,
and to compete in something very big, you need big facilities and
resources,” she said.
“Of course I’m excited about going there. I want to live the experience
of being in China for the Olympics! It's something nice to represent
Lebanon and I’m proud of myself.”

Then there’s Wael Kobrosli, who’ll be competing in the 100 meter breast
stroke. His training was suspended for two weeks in May while Lebanon
went through another one of its periodic brushes with mayhem—that time
when Hezbollah, the militant Shiite “Party of God,” decided to assert itself militarily against its own government. Lebanon was in the midst of a over the election of a new president, since then resolved.

But just as Lebanon’s political crises cost its civilian population
dearly in economic and personal terms, it cost Lebanon’s athletes, too.
“I could not get into a swimming pool for two weeks, and for a swimmer
that is a lifetime,” Kobrolsi said. “But afterwards, I trained twice as
hard to make up for it. I’m happy that even though we have less money
and smaller training facilities than places like the USA, we are still
going out there and competing with the best in the world.”

That’s why, once again, you’ll see Lebanon’s cedar lifted high in the
opening ceremonies as its small contingent make its way into Beijing’s
Bird’s Nest of a stadium, and, Lebanon hopes, into the hearts of a
nation that desperately needs a lift.

Lebanon’s Athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics

Judo

Rudi Hashash

Shooting

Ziad Richa

Swimming

Nibal Yamout

Wael Kobrosli

Track & Field/Athletics

Gretta Teslakian

Mohamad Siraj Tamim

Chart of Medal Count for all Mideast Countries