Quatar and Bahrain - do people there even know Shaheen and Ramzi?

They ask only that the athlete perform a stretching routine on a prayer mat .

Also, it would be interesting to know whether (in the case of the Kenyans) they (the Kenyans) do actually convert to the Muslim religion voluntarily, or are forced to do so?

Hey, this may seem random, but has anyone else noticed a peculiarity in the fact that most kenyans are muslims and most ethiopians are christians? I think we all know who's God is real now. =P

sexyspidey wrote:

Also, it would be interesting to know whether (in the case of the Kenyans) they (the Kenyans) do actually convert to the Muslim religion voluntarily, or are forced to do so?

Hey, this may seem random, but has anyone else noticed a peculiarity in the fact that most kenyans are muslims and most ethiopians are christians? I think we all know who's God is real now. =P

Who says most Kenyans are Muslim?

sexyspidey wrote:

Also, it would be interesting to know whether (in the case of the Kenyans) they (the Kenyans) do actually convert to the Muslim religion voluntarily, or are forced to do so?

Hey, this may seem random, but has anyone else noticed a peculiarity in the fact that most kenyans are muslims and most ethiopians are christians? I think we all know who's God is real now. =P

Jackasss!

Thirty-eight percent of the Kenyon population is Protestant, twenty-eight percent are Roman Catholic, and six percent are Muslim. The remaining people are followers of various traditional religions.

Ethopia: Religions: (A believer or follower of Islam) Muslim 45%-50%, Ethiopian Orthodox 35%-40%, animist 12%, other 3%-8%

Take that! wrote:

sexyspidey wrote:

Hey, this may seem random, but has anyone else noticed a peculiarity in the fact that most kenyans are muslims and most ethiopians are christians? I think we all know who's God is real now. =P

Jackasss!

Thirty-eight percent of the Kenyon population is Protestant, twenty-eight percent are Roman Catholic, and six percent are Muslim. The remaining people are followers of various traditional religions.

http://kenya.com/religion.html

Ethopia: Religions: (A believer or follower of Islam) Muslim 45%-50%, Ethiopian Orthodox 35%-40%, animist 12%, other 3%-8%

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107505.html

hahaha, nice research. I guess then that Allah must be the supreme taco.

sexyspidey wrote:

Take that! wrote:

considering their respecitve GDP's it would also seem that whatever god maybe looking down he seems to like Kenya better than ethopia and seems to have taken a special liking to those godless socialist scandinvian countries...Both economically and in the production of hot ass leggy blonds.

Jackasss!

Thirty-eight percent of the Kenyon population is Protestant, twenty-eight percent are Roman Catholic, and six percent are Muslim. The remaining people are followers of various traditional religions.

http://kenya.com/religion.html

Ethopia: Religions: (A believer or follower of Islam) Muslim 45%-50%, Ethiopian Orthodox 35%-40%, animist 12%, other 3%-8%

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107505.html

hahaha, nice research. I guess then that Allah must be the supreme taco.

10 or 15 years ago countrie like Qatar and Bahrain would hire foreign coaches, particularly from the Eastern Block to coach their athletes. But once their realized no coaching in the world would make a native run fast, they went straight for the cookie jar. They went and got themselves some runners who are products of thousands of years of evolution, freaks from a place called Rift Valley.

Money talks, and so does real talent if you know where to get it!

Yes, each citizen goes out to dinner with both of them on a rotating basis. Do most people in the United States even know who Alan Webb is?

A Qatari (Mohamed Suleiman) did win a bronze medal in the 1500 in the 1992 Olympic Games, long before this Petrodollars-for-Kenyans program was started. Anyone know what his background was?

Usher wrote:

A Qatari (Mohamed Suleiman) did win a bronze medal in the 1500 in the 1992 Olympic Games, long before this Petrodollars-for-Kenyans program was started. Anyone know what his background was?

I do not, but did you see his final 100? He was even closing on Cacho like he was standing still.

I'm not from the Gulf region, but I've spent loads of time there in the past 15 years (too much, actually). Mostly in Bahrain and UAE.

Gulf Arabs are obscenely rich and import most of their labor. Now they are importing athletes that can represent them in international events. For the most part, they are not very athletic people (there are exceptions) and the climate is not conducive to producing good athletes.

I'm sure most of the population has no clue who these runners are. In the UAE, for example, the majority of the population is not even Emirate. They're immigrants from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, etc... Except they have resident status, not citizenship. The ruling families are basically paying to have the name of their country appear in the Olympics, etc... It's all very disgusting and is not in keeping with the spirit of the Olympics or international competition. These guys are just guns for hire with no national allegiance.

Lagat came to America a while back and seems genuinely sincere about being an American citizen. That's fine. But someone like Ramzi probably wuld never move to the Gulf unless there was $ involved.

Gulf Arabs are the most fortunate people on earth. If they didn't sit on petroleum reserves they'd still be roaming the desert on camels and living in tents.

One thing I can tell you is that I'm pretty sure if you recognized him from across the room and yelled the name "Shaheen" to try to get his attention, Stephen Cherono might not realize you were addressing him.

Cerutty Fan wrote:

Do most people in the United States even know who Alan Webb is?

I think they would if he won an Olympic gold medal and held the world record.

RunDaddy wrote:

Gulf Arabs are obscenely rich and import most of their labor. Now they are importing athletes that can represent them in international events.

Maybe there is a cultural mindset difference, but I just find it hard to imagine why paying for non-natives to immigrate and win medals would do anything positive for national or ethnic pride. I would think it would be demoralizing. Why not put their efforts into finding a suitable sport and developing their youth in whatever that is, since money is no object?

I guess there are lots of things I'll never understand about the arab psychology.

blaine, you might not understand the arab mentality; bot don't gloss over the U.S. mentality either. Many here have been critical of Meb,Abdi,Khannouchi and now Lagat; all of whom CHOOSE to live in and represent the U.S. in competition, while glorifying our American medalists like Gatlin,Mo Greene,Allen Johnson, etc. whose ancestors were likely FORCED to come to the U.S.

blaine wrote:

Maybe there is a cultural mindset difference, but I just find it hard to imagine why paying for non-natives to immigrate and win medals would do anything positive for national or ethnic pride. I would think it would be demoralizing. Why not put their efforts into finding a suitable sport and developing their youth in whatever that is, since money is no object?

I guess there are lots of things I'll never understand about the arab psychology.

I once took a military unit basketball team to Muscat, Oman and played the Omani national team. These were actual Omani kids with a beautiful brand new arena built by the Sultan. Our team consisted of a bunch of ex-high school players and 1 kid who played at the University of San Francisco before failing out. We beat their national team by 45 ponts. They sucked, and that was their national team.

I was chatting with their coach after the game and he was complaining that he couldn't get the players to lift weights or do much conditioning. Apparently, in the rich Arab states to be "built" physically means you must be a manual laborer and of a lower class or an immigrant.

Gulf Arab men are an odd combination. They are serial mysoginists, yet at the same time they are frail pussies.

To them, buying elite athletes is not about national pride. It's more like collecting race horses or racing cars. It's just something they can do.

It seems like wasted talent and energy on the part of the Quataris and Bahrain Federations to hire these Kenyan/Moroccan `guns` - as there is no real running tradition in those countries, and in all honesty, the exploits of the newly transplanted runners from Kenya and Morocco will do little if anything to inspire the lazy/rich/indolent youth of the countries of the Gulf, where riches have fallen into their laps thanks to the oil benefits.

Also - the cultural gap between the Kenyans and the people of the Gulf is enormous. The Kenyans from the Highlands are not Muslims (the Kenyan Muslims hail from the coast between Mombasa and Lamu - and those Kenyans are not runners, because of the hot/humid climate).

It would be interesting to know how much time the Kenyans and Moroccans actually spend in Quatar/Bahrain each year, and one suspects that they spend as little time as possible there. It is a very artificial situation, and as one of the posters mentioned, really goes against the Olympic spirit to have people represent a Nation when not really belonging to that Nation at all.

Usher wrote:

A Qatari (Mohamed Suleiman) did win a bronze medal in the 1500 in the 1992 Olympic Games, long before this Petrodollars-for-Kenyans program was started. Anyone know what his background was?

Doesn't tell his whole story but he was a contender for several years even if he only picked up one medal.

looks Somali to me