Anyhow I want to comment about three things :
1- We are very proud about Aya El-Midany , seriously she reminded as that there are other sports than the holy football and its pampered players
2- She is a girl and according to my knowledge very few women athletes in Egypt have managed to reach her score.
3-We do not have many girls participating in sports not because of conservatism but because many families can't join sports clubs due to their high , very high subscription fees.
Good luck to El-Midany :)
Update :
It turned out that there is a Jihan El-Midany , she is our champion in the modern pentathlon like Aya El-Medany , yes it is the E and I thing that brought this confusion , also the fact that unlike the silly footballers we have not heard about this girl in our media . Thanks for dear Tafatefo for clearing this misunderstanding 
I owe an apology to AP :)
Good luck to Jihan :)
proud to hear these news.
ReplyDelete1) There is nothing wrong with AP only with your "journalism". She has registered under this name!
ReplyDeletehttp://gis.singapore2010.sg/RINF-app/generator/cat/bio/lan/ENG/noc/EGY/cid/2501606/participantShort.xml
3) Which is nonsense, Ukraine has by and large same economical performance, 2 times lower population but 10 times more Olympic sport successes.
@Akher Aym, we are all proud of her achievements
ReplyDelete@John, if my journalism is that bad , why you bother coming here in the first place
Actually I am always hear the name as Aya Midany
ReplyDeleteآية مدني غير جيهان الميداني يا فندم
ReplyDeleteجيهان الميداني هتشارك في أوليمبياد الناشئين ومتوقع حصولها على ميدالية أوليمبية لتكون المصرية الأولى .. آية مدني مواليد 88 وشاركت في أوليمبياد 2008 (مش النائشين) وكانت الثامن
ReplyDelete"For me, that is a dream," he said of an Egyptian woman winning a medal. "We came so close in the last Olympics, so if we can make it here, it would be great. It will get us more recognition."
يقصد مشاركة آية مدني
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Aya Medany finished eighth in the pentathlon.
Thanks for the correction Tafatefo pasha :), it turned after all there is a Jihan Midany , I will correct the post right away
ReplyDeleteThose modesty-preserving outfits are hideously ugly. Fine: That is their purpose. But for sport ergonomics and athletic performance, players draped and swaddled in floppy fabric are a disaster. These girls will never succeed in the top echelon of sport.
ReplyDeleteOne usually has to follow two sides to stay in picture ... the bad and the good.
ReplyDeleteFor nationalistic religious nonsenses there is Zeinobia for clever smart and hell funny posts from Egypt there is Sandmonkey, who unfortunately has not been active much last days.
Jason now imagine the ramadan fasting ... due to ramadan fasting I would bet against her
@Jason , strangely those girls achieved these results in these outfits !!??
ReplyDelete@John , again and again it is up to you not to subscribe or visit my blog and you can stick to Sand-monkey whom by the way I respect very much despite our political and ideological differences
and it is up to you to publish/answer my comments
ReplyDeleteYou "respect" him just because he is an Egyptian, that is why I call you a nationalist psychopath ... my position is not much different from him. I use only a bit expressive language.
btw I am a bit sceptical about the word respect
@Zeinobia
ReplyDelete"strangely those girls achieved these results in these outfits !!??"
I know, Z. If the girls are good enough athletes they will pull off some wins as in this case. But the problem about non-optimal sport attire becomes more and more profound the higher the level of competition. There are unavoidable statistical reasons stemming from the bell-shaped curve distribution of sporting ability. At the highest levels, i.e., the "tails" of the distribution, top contenders are so closely matched that otherwise minor details like clothing assume great importance. An example of this from not long ago: Swimmer Michael Phelps, remember him? He won 8 Olympic gold medals for the USA in swimming. Not long after the Olympics he was in a match against another good swimmer. Such events are decided in inches or fractions of a second. The guy who swam against him wore a non-woven polyurethane body suit, and beat Phelps. The win had to stand, but a few days later the governing authorities of the sport banned that type of suit.
But it's not about swimming, there is an important lesson to be learned about sporting equipment regardless of the particular sport, and it is this: At the pinnacle of achievement there can be no consideration but performance. None! The ancient Greeks didn't know about probability distributions, but they understood this intuitively; hence Greek athletes competed naked. The primary strike against the modesty apparel is not ugliness but non-optimality for the purpose of performance.
The Iranian girls will figure it out, some of them anyway. The top competitors among them will figure it out. And they will wear optimal clothing or be furious at the dirty-minded old men who forbid it.
Which reminds me of this Iranian band's remake of a Pink Floyd classic on YouTube: Another Brick In The Wall (Hey Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone!)
@John
ReplyDelete"Jason now imagine the ramadan fasting ... due to ramadan fasting I would bet against her"
I hadn't thought about that, but you are absolutely right. Not being able to pack in the calories is worse than modesty attire for performance in very physical sports. Really, there is no hope for an observant Muslim attempting to compete during a Ramadan fast.
"Really, there is no hope for an observant Muslim attempting to compete during a Ramadan fast."
ReplyDeleteNo hope, really?I beg to differ,I've noticed that the majority of practicing Muslim players in the English premierleague have experienced no problems during ramadan , and continue to perform on a highly consistent level... just saying.
Saying that a piece of cloth worn on top of the head will significantly worsen a PROFESSIONAL+ SKILLED athlete's performance , is akin to saying that nike kicks will turn a crappy player into a basketball god/goddess.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I believe that travel teams and athletes on tour are not necessarily required to fast due to a "rokhsa",which allows one to eat if he is out of the country for a short period of time... There's even a fatwa claiming that athletes who feel that they cannot compete at an optimal level during ramadan can break their fast and make up for it later.
@Anonymous and @Polly Cocker,
ReplyDeleteIf the athletes don't have to fast, no problem. But if they must fast while their competitors needn't, they cannot be successful at the highest level.
"...is akin to saying that nike kicks will turn a crappy player into a basketball god/goddess"
No! You misunderstood utterly. Maybe I didn't explain well. You or I cannot outrun Usain Bolt no matter what kind of track shoes we wear. Jascha Heifetz can make a cheap violin sound vastly better than an amature on a ten-million dollar Stradivarius. Minor differences in equipment matter greatly only at the highest levels of accomplishment, where competitors tend to be evenly matched, and to perform consistently. This is not a matter of music or sport, nor a matter of opinion. It is a mathematical fact, and you are free to disagree, but you are wrong, period.
"But if they must fast while their competitors needn't, they cannot be successful at the highest level."
ReplyDeleteYou are stating it as if it were a fact. As the anonymous poster said, there are plenty of fasting players who compete in the English premierleague and several other top flight soccer leagues around the world , and most of them still manage to perform at a consistent level throughout the month.Yet I agree, if god is willing to let you make up for your unfasted days at a later time, then it shouldn't be an issue.
"Minor differences in equipment matter greatly only at the highest levels of accomplishment, where competitors tend to be evenly matched, and to perform consistently."
Well if you are saying that certain equipment such as tennis rackets and footwear with better grip will give a competitive athlete an edge over his opponent,then I absolutely agree.
Yet, a hijab is not a piece of equipment; rather it can be viewed similarly to a baseball cap, a wide bandana(think Nadal), or even a pair of sunglasses ( all of which are usually optional for tennis players). Quite frankly, I don't see any of the articles of clothing mentioned above impeading players from winning wimbledon championships.