A Qatari team will be at the 11th Special Olympics World Winter Games in Austria, marking their fourth appearance.
Team Qatar is once again ready to prove the country’s athleticism to the globe. This time around, the national team will be participating at the 11th Special Olympics World Winter Games that will take place across four Austrian cities, Graz, Schladming, Ramsau and Rohrmoos, starting this Friday.
There will be over 3,000 athletes coming in from 110 countries to take part in the winter sports competitions that will go on until March 25. Qatar will be competing alongside 14 other Arab nations, they are: Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, Oman, UAE, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Five local athletes make up the Qatari team, which will be competing in two sports, speed skating in the city of Graz, and snowshoeing in Ramsau. The speed skating team is made up of Khalifa Al-Dossari, Hamad Albehaih and Mubarak Alhebabi, while Abdulla Almannai and Saoud Alsulaiti will represent the country in snowshoeing category.
The Special Olympics World Games is world’s biggest sporting competition for athletes with intellectual and physical disabilities. The games take place every two years, alternating between summer and winter games.
Each Games, as many as 350,000 people volunteer to help organize and coach the events. This will be Qatar’s fourth consecutive participation having been represented before in Japan, USA and South Korea.
