Ghada Shouaa

Ghada Shouaa ( Arabic غادة شعاع, DMG Ġāda Šuʿāʿ ; * September 10, 1972 in Mhardeh ) is a former Syrian athlete and heptathlete . In 1996 she won the first (and so far only) gold medal for her country at the Olympic Games . She lives in Simmern .

biography

Shouaa's first sport was basketball ; she played for a while in the Syrian national team, but then decided to switch to athletics. She played her first heptathlon in the 1991 season. At the World Championships in Tokyo in the same year she was last. At the Asian Athletics Championship in November 1991, she won the silver medal.

At the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona she was ranked 25th despite an injury. Her international breakthrough only came in the 1995 season when she won the important heptathlon meeting ( Mösle all-around meeting ) in Götzis and scored 6715 points. Suddenly she was the top favorite for the World Championships in Gothenburg . After her fellow competitor Sabine Braun had to give up due to an injury, Shouaa became world champion with a comfortable margin. In 1996 she won the heptathlon again in Götzis, setting the Asian record that is still valid today (6942 points). At the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta , she became the first female Olympic champion in her country. It has remained the only gold medal for Syria to date (2020).

A serious injury ruined the following season. Shouaa only made the comeback in 1999 when she finished third at the World Championships in Seville . Shortly before the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney , Shouaa injured himself again and then withdrew from top-class sport.

Even after her retirement, she remained loyal to the sport and trained the offspring of the LGVG Emmelshausen.

literature

• zurgams (editor): Time leaps . 35 years of the Mösle all-around meeting in Götzis. Bucher Verlag, Hohenems 2009, ISBN 978-3-902679-23-9

Web links

• Ghada Shouaa in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Ghada Shouaa in the database of World Athletics (English)