CAIRO: The Egyptian Wrestling Federation vowed to keep its faith in Olympic Champion Karam Gaber to retain his gold medal in Beijing 2008, subject to the wrestler s commitment to a set training program as well as undergoing doping tests.
Despite the remarks Gaber recently made against the Federation, we will still maintain our faith in him. He s an exceptional talent, Ahmed El Sinterasi, president of the Egyptian Wrestling Federation said at a press conference on Thursday at the premises of the Federation.
El Sinterasi emphasized that the Federation has been a support to Gaber in spite of the wrestler s unprofessional attitude throughout the past eight months, which led to Gaber s first round exit of the World Championship last year.
Since then he has accused the Federation of neglecting his training needs, while the true fact is that LE 280,000 was spent in the last six months to prepare Gaber for the upcoming World Championship to be held next September in Azerbaijan, the championship which would allow Gaber to qualify for the Olympic Games next year, said El Sinterasi. Atef El Mehay, the technical director of the Federation noted that Gaber was blighted by an injury during a training camp in the US last December, thus the Federation had to cancel the training camps that followed in Belarus, Bulgaria and Greece.
Moustafa Abdallah, the general director of the Federation said that the “World Wrestling Federation had sent us a letter last January calling for a doping test for three players, including Karam Gaber.
Abdallah added that “Two samples were already sent, while Gaber s sample is yet to be done. Due to the injury and consumption of vitamins without referring to the medical committee as well as the fact that Gaber has refused to do the doping test, these have put us in a critical situation as we will be subject to a fine of 5,000 euros. So we have to send Gaber s sample as soon as possible, given that he fully recovered from the injury four weeks ago, Abdallah said.
Abdallah noted that it was a good sign that Gaber phoned him early on Thursday, notifying him of his willingness to do a doping test some time next week on condition that he is allowed to travel to the training camp in Poland due to be held next month. El Sinterasi has expressed his concern over Gaber s announcement on Dream TV last week that during his period of injury he had consumed a number of vitamins without notifying the medical committee of the federation.
Consumption of any vitamins should have been under the full supervision of the medical committee, El Sinterasi added. Sources close to the Federation noted that a meeting in the presence of Moustafa Abdallah will bring together Gaber and a representative of the medical committee at the Olympic center today.
Karam will give a list of the vitamins he consumed during his period of injury at this meeting.
A dispute was triggered earlier this month when the Federation sent a complaint to the Olympic Committee regarding Gaber s unprofessional attitude towards the training schedule designed to help him retain the Olympic Gold medal he won in Athens 2004.
It was Egypt s first gold medal since the 1948 summer Olympics in London.
