Arab News

Saudi karate star Tareq Ali Hamedi has booked his ticket for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics by winning the gold medal in the over 75-kg category at the Karate 2020 qualification tournament last month in Paris.

He joins 80 other karate athletes of both genders who will make history in Japan’s capital after the game was officially included as part of the Olympic Games program.

Saudis are hopeful that their man will win first place in the Nippon Budokan (Martial Arts Hall), the venue of the Olympic debut of karate.

In 2014, the World Karate Federation on its official website described Hamedi as the most promising player in the world.

Hamedi, who belongs to the Riyadh-based Al-Hilal club, won the first karate gold medal for Saudi Arabia in 2015 at the World Championship in Jakarta, Indonesia and took gold medals at the GGC karate competition in Dubai and the Bosporus tournament in Turkey in the same year. In 2016, he took top place in the Karate 1-Premier League in Okinawa, following his victory in the final of U-21 Kumite Male over-84 kg class against Kazakhstan’s Dimash Ukmatov.

He won another gold in the over 84-kg category at the 2017 Asian Karate Championship, in Kazakhstan, with a win over Sajjad Ganjzadeh of Iran.

In the 2019 Asian Seniors Karate Championship, held in the Uzbekistan capital of Tashkent, Hamedi beat Japan’s Hideyoshi Kagawa to snatch gold in the Kumite Male over-84 kg class.

Saudi Sports Minister Prince Abdul Aziz bin Turki Al-Faisal tweeted: “Congratulations to the star of our national karate team, captain Tareq Hamedi, for qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.” The Saudi ambassador to the US, Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, congratulated Hamedi on the achievement and expressed her pride in the player.