On the penultimate day of the Paris Olympics, Egypt, which had until then collected just one bronze medal, had its blushes spared when the country picked up a gold and a silver.

Fencer Mohamed Al-Sayed had won Egypt’s first medal after winning the bronze in the men’s epee individual event on 28 July, just two days after the Olympics began.

Twelve sweltering days later, Al-Sayed’s medal remained Egypt’s only medal.

But day 13 marked the arrival of Saturday’s saviors. Ahmed Al-Gendi won the gold in the modern pentathlon (and set a world points record to boot).

Earlier that day Sara Ahmed Samir secured a silver medal in the 81kg women’s weightlifting.

So, in Paris Egypt finished with three medals: gold, silver and bronze.

1-1-1.

Easy to remember. But shouldn’t be forgotten. For we expected to do better.

In Tokyo three years ago, Egypt took home six medals -- a gold, a silver and four bronze -- for the country’s biggest haul at one Games.

Shortly before the Paris Olympics began, Egyptian Minister of Youth and Sports Ashraf Sobhi predicted that Egypt would collect from six to 10 medals.

We never reached those heights. In fact, it took us forever to get to half of them.

For almost the entirety of the 17-day Paris Games, the heat in Egypt had been building, compounded by the country’s sizzling summer. Egypt’s daily news bulletin sounded like Groundhog Day: “Egypt’s so-and-so athlete finished ninth out of 10th, so-and-so finished 19th out of 20, so-and-so finished 62 out of 64.” Bad day after bad day after bad day.

They were unrelentingly poor performances, one after the other.

Ergo, the body temperature of interested Egyptians precipitously rose, to 38C (fever).

It could have gone as far as the mercury would take it, 42C (last rites).

If the thermometer was long enough, it could have hit 100C (roasted remains).

On the few occasions that so-and-so reached the quarter-finals or semis, the hopes of a medal were not just dashed but, in some cases, blown to smithereens. The most glaring example was Morocco’s humiliation of Egypt 6-0 in the men’s football bronze medal game.

There were juicy controversies along the way (there had to be some way to counter the calamities with some levity).

Egypt’s first ever female boxer to qualify for the Olympics exited the Games without throwing a punch when she failed to make her weight division.

On the eve of her first match Yomna Ayad weighed in at 54kg when measured by boxing officials. The next day when she was weighed again just before the bout, she had become 900 grammes heavier. As a result, she was disqualified.

Egypt’s boxing federation said Ayad’s weight gain was attributed to “common physiological changes”.

Some people did not buy the federation’s explanation that Ayad’s cells suddenly morphed on the night of a full moon. They preferred instead to air withering criticism on mainstream and social media, accusing the federation of negligence and not monitoring and following up with their athletes, especially women.

How Ayad gained almost one kilo from sunset to sunrise remains for many an ongoing mystery. There is a lot of guessing over what she had for dinner - a hefty meal, maybe behind closed doors?

Then there was Egyptian fencer Nada Hafez who revealed that she was playing while being seven months pregnant.

Hafez was eliminated from the round of 16 in the women’s sabre individual event but, judging by her posts, she seemed elated by the experience of performing while “carrying a little Olympic champion”. She also said she wanted to highlight what an Egyptian athlete, “and most of all a woman, can do.”

We can tell you what Hafez did. Her bombshell announcement was a stunning admission, as was the many questions of whether Egyptian officials knew about her bulge in the first place. As far as is known, the Egyptian fencing federation never said Hafez was pregnant and the public did not know it until she said so.

If officials were unaware of her condition, it must be asked how does a seven-month pregnancy go unnoticed?

And if they knew, wouldn’t they and Hafez be taking a big risk? Fencing is all about thrusts and parries, actions that could easily lead to a miscarriage.

One would also think that no matter how thrilled Hafez was, she would have found it very difficult to concentrate on her matches, for she would have to have one eye on her opponent and the other on the safety of her unborn child.

There was a brighter conclusion to the mishaps and the misery: three medals, including a gold, was not so bad. We were not terrible in Paris. Egypt finished in 52nd place out of 206 countries. Only 91 countries won medals and Egypt was one of them.

That is a decent result because let’s face it: Egypt has a modest Olympics history. It has collected only 41 medals in the 24 Olympics it has participated in. In Paris alone, the US, which topped the table, won 126 medals.

But not so fast. You can count on one hand how many medals we won – if your hand has three fingers. Egypt should have done better in Paris. Its Olympic trajectory says so: five medals were won in Athens, two in Beijing, four in London, three in Rio and six in Toyo.

An awful amount of money, by Egypt’s standards, was also splashed out. Reportedly LE1.7 billion ($36.6 million) over the last three following the Tokyo Olympics years went to training, equipment, many foreign coaches, and other resources necessary for the build-up.

For a country whose vast majority must struggle with the daily headache of putting food on the table, that’s a lot of food.

We also sent our biggest Olympic contingent to date: 164 athletes, the biggest in Africa and the Arab world.

But apparently bigger is not always better. In our more successful Tokyo Games we sent only 132 athletes.

As dry as the statistics are, they make for a lively debate:

In Paris, the US sent 592 athletes who medaled in 34 sports but came up empty-handed in 10 sports. That’s 77.2 efficiency.

In Paris, Egypt medaled in three sports and received nothing for their troubles in 19 sports. That’s 13.6 per cent inefficiency.

If comparing with a sports powerhouse like the US is like comparing watermelons with grapes, let’s try oranges vs tangerines.

Algeria and newcomer Bahrain collected two gold each while Kenya, with four gold and 11 altogether, was in an entirely different class, one of four African countries which bested Egypt.

The problem with Egypt is obvious: we should not have sent every wannabe to Paris just because they qualified in the African zone.

There must be a sense of where our athletes stand in the world.

Sports like track and field, swimming, archery, shooting and rowing (Egypt lost in all) are measured in seconds and centimetres. It’s black and white mathematics; no room for grey.

An athlete and his or her federation need only look at personal bests, then compare with the best other athletes in the world.

Are the figures close enough to win a medal or is the difference as far from here to Jupiter?

You don’t have to be as close as Noah Lyles was when he won the 100 metres: by five-thousandths of a second.

But the gap cannot be so big that you could drive a truck right through it.

Not following the golden qualification rule led to matchups looking like a varsity team against a JV squad.

Sports that have judges, who use a prescribed system of points, like diving and gymnastics (Egypt lost in both) are subjective – maybe you do well, maybe you don’t. But all the same, to see whether you have a chance, the same qualification rule applies: are we close enough to overcome a judge’s vagaries or are we out of our depth, regardless?

In the three team sports Egypt participated in and which are not measured by a ruler or a stopwatch or a judge, the results were mixed but the result was the same: no medals.

Some Egyptian athletes did not have much chance of winning because their history tells us so. This was shooter Azmi Mehelba’s fourth Olympics. Trips to London, Rio, Tokyo and Paris amounted to nothing except him taking in the sights.  

Faith also came up in these Games. There is no limit to what strong convictions can achieve. However, you cannot expect to be off a world swimming or track record by a mile, yet expect on the day of competition to miraculously make up for the deficit. It simply does not work that way.

Some might suggest that when you qualify for a World Cup, you definitely go to it, so why not go if you’ve made it to an Olympics? Because in the Games it’s much clearer to define what would be considered success. Individual sports are measurable. Other intangible sports are a much iffier proposition.

It’s a good thing that Al-Gendi and Samir, prophetically the Egyptian flag bearers at the Paris opening ceremony, came to the rescue. But it’s too bad their sports were scheduled too late in the Olympic schedule to prevent Egyptian meltdowns. Too bad many Egyptians have not a clue what the modern pentathlon is, and too bad their medals were overshadowed by the implosion against Morocco in football, our most popular sport.

But better late than not at all.

And all three of Egypt’s medal winners are still in their early to mid-20s, young enough to go back for more, in Los Angeles 2028.  

For now, 1-1-1 will have to do. It is not an embarrassing result. But we needed to do better and there was no need to have looked like bystanders so much of the time.

The honour of representing your country in an Olympics is Part I. Part II is winning something once you get there.

 

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* A version of this article appears in print in the 15 August, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly