Meet the 10-year-old Libyan Gymnast Who Brought the Gold Medal Home: Ziad Elshtewi

Ziad is the one in the middle who won first place

Sports play a major role in any society. We begin to experiment with sports from an early age and we play many and many types to know which one would suit us or describe us best. Today sport emerges as an important component of Socio-economic development of countries. The active participation in sports improves community health and productivity, imbibes discipline in character, generates great leaders, and enhances social cohesion. 

At the end of 2019, I was scrolling through Twitter and around that time, I saw many tweets of a trending video about the young boy, Ziad, who won Serbia’s championship of clubs and teams in gymnastics. However, someone I know mentioned me on a tweet suggesting that I must write an article about this boy and his talent and that more people should know about his success in his early age.  

Therefore, I got interested in the idea and decided to reach out to his coach, Abdulrahman Jabr, who tweeted about the championship and the victory they brought back to Libya. He was very fond of the idea and we scheduled on a day for an interview in order to know more about this young gymnast. I was quite amazed to know Ziad’s story and I was incredibly proud to know that despite of the situation in Libya, people are still trying to push forward and achieve in life.  

Ziad Esam Elshtewi is a 10 year old boy who is in sixth grade in primary school. His beginning in Gymnastics was in 2016 under the supervision of coach Jabr. Ziad participated in the Arab Championship in Tunisia in 2019 and he was part of the national team where he obtained the second place and, individually, third place on high bar category. Recently, he participated in Serbia’s international championship where he won first place on high bar and gymnastics vault. 

Coach Jabr has been Ziad’s personal coach whether with the national team or at the training arena. He considers Ziad to be one of the most talented and dedicated players in this game and he will sure have a bright future if he gets the attention and supervision required to reach an Olympic and international status.  

Throughout the interview, I was wondering about the challenges they must have encountered and have been encountering specially with the current situation in the country which made many procedures and processes difficult and would acquire triple the effort to be completed or achieved. Coach Jabr explained to me that the challenges lie within the weak potentials that they have, either in the training arena which lacks many updated Equipements or boot camps which are considered rare and not easy to participate in them.  

However, the main supporters are the parents of the young players and the Libyan Gymnastics Federation and the technical federation in Benghazi. It shows that regardless, they are still trying their best to meet international criteria. They aspire to reach the Olympics in the near future and have a steady participation among international teams and to further make progress in a local level. 

I hope that such achievements get to be recognized on a local and international level so the world can know what Libyans are capable of and that the younger generation have so much to offer. There are many hidden talents that should make it higher and higher. Libya is not a story about geopolitics and war. It is not about the number of deaths you see in the news or the current civil war, it is much more than this. If we can put politics aside and see the reality; we will be amazed by how amazing many Libyans who have been working to develop and build their communities and not destroy them.   

Special thanks to coach Jabr for his openness and willingness to answer my questions.