BAHRAIN’S Olympic hero Ali Khamis yesterday expressed his delight at finishing sixth in the 400m at the Rio Olympics.
The Bahrain-born athlete was first in his heat to qualify to the semi-finals where he finished third in a personal best time of 44.49 seconds.
Khamis again broke his personal best time in the final finishing sixth in 44.34 seconds.
“I thank God for everything I’ve been able to achieve. It’s great to see Bahrainis unite. This is what we all want. The sixth on the world is a great thing to achieve, but I believe I’ll be able to improve on that.” Khamis said.
Khamis spent a year preparing for his first-ever Olympic appearance, which included camps in Bahrain and abroad.
Training
“The preparation was hard, we were in a five-month training camp in Bahrain, then we went to another camp in Bulgaria for almost four months right before the Olympics,” said Khamis, who first started running when he was at the Imam Al Ghazali School.
Following the training programme Khamis was confident of a positive result in Rio.
“Nobody can expect anything before the race but everyone puts great efforts in training and hard work will never go unnoticed, I always knew it will pay off,” he said.
“I got what I deserved in this race and hopefully in the next race I will be able to get a better result. My bigger goal however is to be in Tokyo in 2020,” he concluded.