22 Feb 2024
Aspire Academy student-athlete Seif Hemeida once again broke the Qatar national senior record for the pole vault as he finished fourth at the recent Asian Indoor Athletics championships in Iran.
His leap of 5.55 metres saw him not only add 4 centimetres to his national record it also saw him move to the top of the global rankings for the under-20 pole vault in 2024.
He narrowly missed out on a bronze medal at the championships as he finished behind Saudi Arabia’s Hussain Al-Hizam on countback after the two athletes cleared the same height.
The clearance for Hemeida, who is coached by Qatar Athletics Federation’s (QAF) Pawel Szczyrba, will boost his confidence as he targets a medal at the 2024 World Under-20 Athletics Championships in Colombia in August.
Hemeida, who turns 19 in March, first broke the national senior record at the same championships last year in Kazakhstan when he cleared 5.35m to win a silver medal.
In June last year, he improved that mark to 5.50m as he claimed gold at the Asian Under-20 Championships in South Korea.
He jumped one centimetre higher a month later to win gold in athletics at the Arab Games in Algeria.
There was a bronze medal and a new indoor personal best for Abubakar Haydar Abdalla in the 800m in Tehran, as the Aspire Academy graduate aims to be named by QAF to compete at his third straight Olympics later this year in Paris.
This was his second individual medal at the Asian Indoor Championships after he took gold over 800m also in Tehran in 2018.
Haydar is the reigning outdoor Asian champion after he won gold in Thailand last year.