In a previous post, I wrote about the importance of sports for every nation and why we should support it and sponsor athletes. I mentioned that the international success of a nation’s athletes encourages many to be proud and start doing sports as well following them as role models. An article in this week’s issue of the German Focus magazine talks about the popularity of Tennis in Germany and how the number of members in the German Tennis Federation went from 1.7 million in 1985 to 2.3 million in 1994. This was the era of the German tennis players Boris Becker and Steffi Graf, 3-times and 7-times Wimbledon winners respectively. After the end of this era the number of members went down to 1.7 million in 2012. Back then, the German Tennis Federation received income of about 125 million Deutsche Mark from just 1 sport Advertisement Company, besides the 3-digit figures of millions of Deutsche Mark it was receiving from TV broadcasting rights for tournaments. All this disappeared with missing internationally successful German Tennis players.
They joke with me in my family that my blog is a fan page for Lawrence of Arabia. The truth is that the success of Lawrence at international level and his qualifying for the Rio Olympics would give the sport of Triathlon a badly needed boost in the Arab world. To get there, I will happily make my blog a fan page for Lawrence of Arabia…. and for Omar Nour, but also for Mohamed Alsayed, Mohamed Khalid, Fatma Hagras, Joupinar Tarek, Rami Abu Sheikh, Younes Coucous, and every male and female Arab triathlete with a good chance to do well on a national, regional or international level.
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