UAE’s Majed Al Mansoori made an impressive run to the quarter-finals in the fencing individual foil competition at the Asian Games yesterday before getting eliminated by Olympic silver medallist, Japan’s Yoki Ota.
The 21-year-old Emirati delivered a pleasant surprise when he beat Kazakhstan’s Yuriy Bidarev and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Hazzazi to make it through the preliminaries before ousting Philippines’ Nathaniel Perez 15-11 in the last 16 to advance to the quarters.
Al Mansoori was humbled 15-3 by Ota in the last eight but UAE fencing team manager Qassim Al Taher was thrilled by the Emirati’s unprecedented achievement.
"For someone as young as Majed, to reach the quarter-finals at the Asian Games is a huge achievement. No other Arab has reached this stage in Asia," he said.
"He fought with honour in this event and the fact that he was exposed to such high level of competition will only help him improve more and more."
Meanwhile, UAE handball goalkeeper Mohammed Al Taher slammed the team’s coach Mounir bin Ali following their third consecutive defeat, placing "90 per cent" of the blame on him.
The UAE were unable to capitalise on the slim chance they had of advancing through their group as they suffered a crushing 28-18 defeat to Oman, the same team they had beaten in the Asian Championship last February to book a historic spot in the 2015 Handball World Championship in Qatar.
It meant the UAE went winless in Group C action and Al Taher was scathing in his evaluation of their coach.
"We didn’t leave our families and travel to Korea to lose. We came to win," said Al Taher, who plays for Al Wasl.
"I place 90 per cent of the blame on our coach. The players can take responsibility for the shots they missed but the coach is the one who makes all the substitutions and is the one who is responsible for everything, especially our defence.
"This was supposed to be our preparation for the World Championships. We should’ve been able to beat Oman.
"Us players are very unhappy with our performance at the Asian Games and our preparations for it. It is a stark difference to the way we played in the Asian Championships when we qualified to the Worlds.
"We apologise to the UAE people but also ask for support as we promise to do better in the future."
Coach bin Ali believes the team’s failure in Incheon is a result of a group of circumstances and refused to take sole ownership of the blame.
"We are missing five key players from our line-up including the experienced Abdulla Essa and our preparation wasn’t great because we played very few friendlies leading up to the Games," said bin Ali.
"We included some inexperienced and young players who are competing on the continental level for the first time, while some of the players came here without being physically ready.
"So there is more than one reason behind our poor results. We tried to give our best but we just couldn’t deal with the absence of our star players.
"I am upset at these results. We need to be realistic and study where we went wrong in a calm manner."
In swimming, UAE’s Mohammed Al Ghaferi (above) placed 19th in the 50m backstroke heats but was happy to clock 27.59 seconds, the second-fastest swim of his career and his quickest time in 18 months.
In cycling, Yousif Mirza (below) enters the second day of the Omnium race (made up of six events) today in fifth place having accumulated 15 points from the first three events yesterday. The 25-year-old Emirati came first in the 15km opening event, was sixth in the 4km Individual Pursuit, and was eighth in the Omnium Elimination race.
Today he will contest the 1km Time Trial, the Flying Lap 330m Time Trial and finally the 40km Points Race.
In football, Jordan beat India 2-0 to top Group G ahead of the UAE, who will now face Vietnam in the last 16 on Friday September 26.
