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Hosting the Olympics is set to be a marathon for Gulf bidders

If Qatar and Saudia Arabia bid for 2036 they face a race against time to train medal-winning talent

Olympics in the Gulf Yohei Osada/AFLO via Reuters Connect
Qatar's Mutaz Barshim, centre, with Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy and Maksim Nedasekau of Belarus, at the men's high jump medal ceremony during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games

With the Olympic Games now well under way in Paris, the race for medals has started.

The US is likely to lead the way. Its total medal haul across the entirety of Summer Games history is rapidly approaching 3,000, of which more than 1,000 have been gold.

With the US historically dominating and the likes of China pursuing, smaller nations such as Great Britain have also accumulated impressive medal tallies (nearly 1,000 medals, of which almost 300 have been gold).

Even Jamaica, with a population of less than three million, has won almost 100 medals, 26 of them gold.

The Gulf countries’ medal record at the games is rather different. Qatar has recently had some success, securing eight medals, including two golds (in field athletics and weightlifting, at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021).



The UAE’s record is less impressive (two medals, one of them gold), while Saudi Arabia’s Olympic performances have been weak. For a country now lavishing resources on sport, the kingdom’s medals record is poor: four medals, zero golds. 

In the short term, medal tallies like this suggest that this summer’s Games are likely to make for uncomfortable viewing across the Gulf. Over the longer term, there are important questions for the region, especially given the mooted bids of both Saudi Arabia and Qatar to stage the 2036 Olympic Games.

Spending billions of dollars on breathtaking infrastructure is one thing, but creating a talent pipeline that helps sustain medal-winning performances is a different matter. 

Feeling good can prompt spending; medal winners often serve as heroes and icons who may help enable transformational change

While winning may not be everything, in terms of demonstrating return on investment it is one measure that most countries use in their calculations of success.

Furthermore getting one’s athletes onto the medal podium helps create a feel-good factor at home while projecting a positive image across the world. 

Feeling good can prompt spending and a rise in gross domestic product; medal winners often serve as heroes and icons who may help enable transformational change, for instance in boosting sports participation or promoting equality.

Countries across the Gulf should not therefore simply dismiss winning as a form of muscle flexing or vanity. 

Imagining that Riyadh or Doha will host the 2036 Olympic Games therefore means that Saudi Arabia or Qatar has just 12 years to develop the talent needed if they are to win big.

Neither have particularly well-established structures and systems that can sustain an effective talent pipeline, which implies that they will need either to hot-house or harvest talent.

Grass, Plant, Architecture If successful in its bid for the Olympic Games, Qatar could make use of venues such as the Al Janoub stadium, built for the World CupAlamy via Reuters Connect
If successful in its bid for the Olympic Games, Qatar could make use of venues such as the Al Janoub stadium, built for the World Cup

Hot-housing requires domestic talent to be identified and developed in a quick and intensive way.

Here, Qatar already has some experience. The Aspire Academy, established in 2004, helped the country to prepare for the 2022 Fifa World Cup, something it was reasonably successful at doing. Ahead of the World Cup, the country’s men’s national team won both the 2019 and 2024 Asian Cup tournaments.

At the same time, Aspire has been the driving force behind the successes of Olympic high jumper Mutaz Barshim, born in Qatar though to Sudanese parents. The country’s leading scorers at the 2019 and 2024 Asian Cups were Almoez Ali and Akram Afif respectively, also the children of African migrants.

In the case of Bahrain, all its Olympic medals have been won by African migrants. Recruiting athletes in Africa thus remains a potential strategy for delivering sporting success in the Gulf.

If the primary intention is not to win medals, then why else may Qatar and Saudi Arabia be contemplating hosting an Olympics? In the former’s case, there has already been a previous bid, with Doha losing out to Tokyo for the right to host the Games in 2020.

Following the 2022 World Cup, Qatar is effectively now locked into bidding for mega and major events if it is to make the most of the expensive infrastructure it has constructed.

Qatar has the advantage

Whether the country generated a tangible economic benefit that outweighed the rumoured $240 billion it spent preparing to host football’s biggest tournament is  moot.

Yet hosting the 2036 Olympics would come at minimal cost – Qatar already has the infrastructure it needs – implying a potential for generating a positive economic return.

In contrast Saudi Arabia is currently not in a position to host such mega events.

The government in Riyadh will therefore have to sanction a massive building programme should the country be selected to host the 2036 event. This raises questions about economic returns – the popular view being that the costs of staging an Olympics typically outweigh the benefits.

Given Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud’s stated intention that sport must eventually contribute three percent to annual gross domestic product, delivering a Games will require careful planning.

Nevertheless, as the opening ceremony of Paris 2024 showed, staging the Olympics is often about image and the projection of soft power. France drew from its traditions but was also keen to project modernity and cosmopolitanism.

Faced with ongoing concerns about their motives and systems of government, both Saudi Arabia and Qatar may feel that the costs of Olympic hosting pale into insignificance compared with the immense, intangible reputational benefits the event would generate.

The International Olympic Committee is probably still some way off deciding which country will host the 2036 games and Gulf bidders will face competition from several other nations, likely to include India and Turkey among others.

However, with the IOC having recently moved towards a “preferred host” model that eliminates the need for a voting process, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are already likely to be lobbying hard to get themselves in the fast lane to Olympic hosting success.

Simon Chadwick is professor of sport and geopolitical economy at Skema Business School in France

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