Alkass Digital
After two weeks of exciting breach sports action, the curtains were drawn on the inaugural Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC) Beach Games at the Aspire Park in Doha on Saturday with the finals of the men's beach volleyball, men's beach handball and the men's beach football held on the day.
Saturday's event had in attendance various dignitaries including QOC Secretary-General HE Jassim bin Rashid al-Buenain, Secretary-General of the Maldives Olympic Committee HE Ahmed Marzooq, QOC Sports Affairs Director Kalid Al Jaber, President of Qatar Volleyball Association Ali bin Ghanem Al Kuwari, President of the Qatar Handball Association Ahmad Mohammad Al-Shaabi among others.
One of the major highlights of the day was the highly entertaining final match of the football event which saw Shahaniyah being crowned the champions after staging a dramatic comeback from 4-1 down to level the scores at 5-5 in the third period against Doha. They subsequently won the game 8-6 after the resultant penalty shootout.
The match, which the attending dignitaries and a capacity crowd witnessed, had all the trappings of a befitting final as it had all the fans glued to their seat for most parts of the game as the players went toe-to-toe against each other.
The Doha team ended up rueing their several wasted opportunities and some laxity at their defence, especially in the second period, which allowed Shahaniyah to come back into the game after being on the back foot most part.
Aside from the trophy and medals, Shahaniyah walked away with the QR50,000 winners' prize money while Doha got QR40,000 for their effort.
In the handball event, Al Edaid were crowned champions and earned the QR40,000 prize money after defeating Al Khafji 2-1 (23-21, 12-14, 10-8) while Al Adaam trounced Al Nojoom 2-0 (21-13, 21-18) to claim the tournament's championship trophy as well as the QR40,000 prize-money in the volleyball event. The runners-up of both events went home with QR30,000, respectively.
Aside from the crowning of the day's winners, the champions of all the women's events and the men's basketball 3X3 were also crowned on the day.
Seashore, the women's football winners, got QR30,000 aside from the championship trophy while Team A7, the runners-up were rewarded with QR20,000.
Women's handball champions, Al Shaqab, also went home with QR30,000 while runners-up Yasminat of Tunisia walked away with QR20,000. The same was for volleyball which was won by Al Maha with Al Amal being the runners-up.
However, in the basketball 3X3 events, men's champions Al Ahlam were rewarded with QR30,000 while Al Wakrah, the runners-up got QR20,000. In the women's event, Qatar B who defeated Doha to claim the trophy got QR25,000 while QR15,000 was for the second-placed.
The QR470,000 total prize-money QOC Beach Games, a legacy event from the maiden ANOC World Beach Games that Qatar successfully hosted in 2019, saw about 500 male and female athletes who competed in four events namely beach volleyball, beach handball, beach football and beach basketball 3X3. One of the many achievements from the competition was the spotted talents, especially in the women's event where several under-16 and under-17 players with potentials to join the national teams were discovered.?