sport > qt take
Danish player Hansen scores against Saudi Arabia
WE LIVED IT, WE WON IT
A spectator’s perspective of the Qatar Handball Championships 2015. Photography By Ken Clark
The Qatari cheering squad 86 > QATAR TODAY > FEBRUARY 2015
O
ver the course of two weeks, we had attended as many matches as we could manage without passing out from exhaustion and sleep deprivation. We sat in every part of the stadium–from the media boxes and the VIP seats to the skyboxes and the economy seats at the topmost levels from where the players look like tiny stick figures. And we saw every kind of match; ones that were decided in the last two seconds of the game and those that were sealed in the first 15 minutes (and yet, some of the best plays we saw were made by teams that had absolutely no chance of winning). And we can assure you, handball is just as exciting and adrenaline-fueled no matter where you sit, who you support and how tired you are. Who knew! Qatar Handball 2015 was, for the most part, a success. Losail Multipurpose Hall and Ali Hamad bin Al Attiya Arena are both world-class. Not only is Losail gorgeous to look at (especially so when all lit up and bathed in fireworks), it has top-notch facilities. Iraqi artist Ahmad Al Bahrani’s sculptures in the stadium premises are Qatar’s newest public art commissions. And apart from some congestion at the Roundabout past the Doha Golf Club which meets the road from Duhail, the traffic was never clogged at the stadium itself. It was a feat. Especially for someone who had been
Scenes from the stellar opening ceremony
The match where it all began; Qatar vs Brazil on the inaugural day of the games
A Qatari cheering contingent arrives
dropping in from the first day of the championship, and could see the numbers swell every day even as the Qatari team made steady progress in the game. During the Super 8 and quarter-final matches, the stadium was a sea of white thobes. It was quite a sight, one you had to see to believe. The volunteers, the orange-clad warriors, were of course the backbone of the games, always smiling, helpful, and in high spirits. Qatar’s stunning progress into the Final Four played no small part in drumming up supporters for the game. In the early days, we’d get emails from the Ministry of Interior inviting us to bring our family and friends to the Qatar games, assuring us free entry. By the end, even people with paid tickets were unable to get in. We were also left a bit shell-shocked (pleasantly, of course) at the big names that were roped in for post-
match entertainment. The organisers have truly outdone themselves and maybe deliberately so, to show the world that Qatar can and will put on a good show come 2022. Now we have to talk about the bad. Of course, there were inevitable problems with the tickets. Between open invitations to walk in for free (Qatar Airways, for instance, had encouraged their employees to show up, present their company IDs and collect tickets on the day of the match) and Qatar’s unexpected winning streak, it was probably hard to predict the kind of crowd that would throng to the stadiums (especially when Arab teams like Tunisia and Egypt were playing). What was unconscionable was turning away people who had valid tickets just because you wanted to fill the stadium and fill it with specific kinds of people. Yes, the home team was doing QATAR TODAY > FEBRUARY 2015 > 87
sport > qt take
The Voices of Qatar
H
Pharrell Williams makes everyone "Happy"
ow far would you go to see Pharell Williams? New York, Boston, perhaps even as close as Abu Dhabi? Well, you didn’t need to travel out of Doha on January 22. Pharrell Williams performed live in our city and, contrary to what most people think, it was a packed, sold-out event. The ‘happy man’ surveyed the stadium at one point, almost in disbelief. He called out for peace in the Middle East and got the crowd on its feet in no time. Not to be outdone, Gwen Stefani and her dancers wowed the audience with their Qatari designer outfits and chutzpah. With doubts about the performance till the very last minute, no one was any the wiser till the announcers mentioned that she would indeed be performing after the two handball matches on January 24. As the ‘Hollaback girl’ caught her breath, she revealed that it's
been eight years since she last sang some of these songs. “I love you Qatar, call us back,” shouted a delighted Gwen. We hope indeed that someone is listening. And in one of the most high-energy performances ever witnessed in Losail, Jason Derulo brought the roof down with his slick dance moves and international hits like ‘Wiggle’, ‘Trumpets’ and ‘Talk Dirty’. Though obviously lipsyncing (he wasn’t even trying to hide it), Derulo kept the crowd on its feet, singing to besotted young ladies in the front rows and posing for selfies. The attendence was decent despite the short notice and it being a weekday but the atmosphere was super charged on account of the Qatar win and the thrilling Spain-Denmark match. Even as we go to print, the organisers have announced that singers Taio Cruz and Kylie Mingoue will perform on the final day.
Drummers light up the opening ceremony
Mascot Fahad gets the crowds cheering
View from the skybox
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amazingly well and its countrymen wanted to cheer them on, but ignoring all rules of commerce to fill up the lower level seats with just Qataris and leave paying customers out in the cold does not instill a lot of confidence in fans. Worse still, when we attempted to buy tickets for the semi-finals, all seats on the lower levels appeared to be sold out. Sources inside told us they have been asked not to sell any tickets in those sections despite their availability. No doubt they have been pre-reserved. If we didn’t suspect it before, we knew now for certain: the homogeneity of the audience in the lower levels was definitely by design. What
is the logic behind that anyway? Because some of the loudest fans in the stadium who were screaming their lungs out every time Qatar scored were in the upper levels, those who had taken a chance to drive all the way despite having no tickets or, worse still, had their tickets downgraded. Though this happened only once, and is unlikely to be repeated for the semi-finals (we hope), the organisers must understand that little incidents like this will negate all the great work they have been doing otherwise. If nothing else, the championship has a lot of lessons, good and bad, for Qatar and its hosting ambitions