Quo Vadis, Nahla Ramadan?

Disclaimer: The information on this blog entry is based on internet writings, doubtful recollections and pure assumptions. Therefore this is not a valid article and if you find false information or you just know better, please let me know. Due to my Arabic skills – well I don't even know the alphabets, let alone the actual language – it is pretty hard to collect some real data. E.g. I have no idea what happened to Nahla between 2005 and 2007.


21st of november 2003 was a big day for Egyptian weightlifting. After Shang Chichun of China was disqualified for a doping offense, just 18-year-old junior Nahla Ramadan was declared winner and thus Egypt got their first world championship gold medal in a long long time. Recording 117,5 kg in snatch (new junior world record), 145 kg in clean and jerk summing up to a total of 262,5 kilos which was too much for her rivals. A new weightlifting star was born.

As often with young athletes, the person behind succes was the players father, in this case, Nahla's dad Mohamed who was a former lifter himself with several national championships on his belt. He introduced Nahla and her sister Nagham in to the world of weightlifting at a young age, but only Nahla was the one making big succes and she got into national weightlifting team in 2001. She got a Bulgarian trainer Yurden Ivanov and moved to Ras Al-Bar's training center. Results of an professional type of training started to show soon as the next year Nahla took bronze medal in 69 kilo category before taking the gold in 75's in 2003.

In Egypt where they don't have much olympic athletes – especially women – Nahla become quite known and she was one of the county's olympic hopes in Athens. This can be very difficult situation for a young athlete when one has to cope with lots of pressure and everything comes so quickly. Then it happened; being a gold medal favourite, Nahla first underperformed in snatch and failed in all of her clean and jerk attempts. She just wasn't seasoned well enough to withstand attention of 70 million people.

The real troubles started after the Olympics when there were rumours that Qatar is trying to get her to join their nation. Qatar was known for recruiting athletes from poor countries with big money which naturally sound like a good offer for an ahtlete who is from simple Alexandrian circumstances. Nahla's 180 000 LE (~ 22 600 €) Meditereanean games reward money and other bonuses she got might sound big in Egyptian standards, but considering that she's an international level athlete, it is not that much. You really can't blame an athlete for thinking a decent incomes, but she turned the offer down at that time.

After another disappointing performance in year's main event in 2005, in which Nahla placed 5th, the situation culminated as Mohamed Ramadan said that Nahlan hasn't got what she deserved and tried to blackmail more money. He came to Nahla's training camp and took her away. Federations response to this was to ban Nahla for life in 2007, file a complaint to Egypt's Attorney General in order to prevent Nahla from traveling abroad and sue her to get back money they have used to prepare her since 2005. It seemed like her lifting career was over.

The situation cleared after few twist and turns in 2008 after Nahla and her father apologised their behavior and everything they've done. Whatever happened behind the curtains, the most important was that Nahla and her fellow sufferer Esmat Mansour El Sayed were eglible to compete again. Nahla was meant to take part in Eleiko GP, but you can't see her name on the score sheet. I hope that everything is ok with her and we can see her competing in the future.