Thirty-five years ago my father, Joachim Krug, arrived in Qatar carrying little more than a suitcase, some sports equipment and a long-cherished dream to participate in the Olympic Games.
It was exactly 22.35pm on February 13, 1982, when he stepped off the plane at Doha International Airport that had just arrived from Germany, a date and time etched deep into his vast recollections and memory.
Never one for waiting around for something to happen, my father, who was an indoor shot put champion, rose early the next morning and began to train with a group of athletes under his charge, at Khalifa Stadium.
“At the start, when I came here, there were only six coaches in athletics,” he said. “Four Germans and two Belgians. Khalifa Stadium was a huge structure far outside of Doha and there was just a small winding road that led to the stadium. But there has been huge development in Qatar over the years.
“When I was first approached to come to Doha I didn’t know anything about the country. I knew it was somewhere in the Middle East, that there was desert and a single stadium. To be honest, no-one in Germany knew it. Now everyone does, and sport has contributed a lot to this understanding and development.”
My father, who turns 64 this July, has been a sportsman most of his adult life and all of mine. The day before he left West Germany he won the German indoor championships in shot put, and the Bild newspaper published a piece about his new destination — a magical tale from his past.
“Krug, who escaped from East Germany in 1972, feels like he is in a tale from a Thousand and One Nights, but he would have to be Aladdin with the wonder lamp to turn the desert sons into world class athletes.”
It was a story I had heard about without many details. My father, it turns out, had a fascinating one to tell.
Aged just 20, he was an ambitious and daring sportsman when he escaped from East Germany, jumping the wall that divided Germany and hopping through a minefield at the peak of the Cold War.
With a mixture of his immensely powerful sportsman’s athleticism, luck and ingenuity that was needed for a journey that not many survived, he succeeded in crossing the no-man’s land and a new adventure beckoned.
Following his journey from East to West, he was approached to become a throwing coach for Qatar’s athletics team in early 1982. In search of a new adventure, he happily agreed.
“There wasn’t much in my suitcase when I arrived,” he said, recalling the memory. “A few sports clothes, a couple of T-shirts and sports shoes. On the first day at work, I arrived at Khalifa Stadium and there were 10 athletes lined up, all more or less talented. I knew there was a great challenge lying ahead for me.”
When pressed on his rather daring escape from East Germany, he simply shrugs and smiles. “That’s in the past, when I was younger. I only look forward now.”
But he is always happy to talk about the country that he made his home, and where I was subsequently born, two years after his arrival.
More recently, I began to think of his journey, and my own, when the Qatar-Germany Year of Culture 2017 began in Doha. Former German president Christian Wulff inaugurated the year by saying: “In 1954 the Federal Republic of Germany became FIFA World Champion for the first time.
“Nine years after a war that had torn apart the world, the German national team surprised it. Many consider this to be the moment when the Federal Republic was, in a way, culturally founded.
“Fifty two years later Germany surprised the world again. When the World Cup took place in Germany in 2006 everyone could see a lively, diverse and open society. A lot of cliches about Germany disappeared. I personally wish that Qatar, the Islamic and Arabic world will present themselves as lively, modern and creative countries, too.”
Growing up in Qatar, and having studied at a university in Nottingham or on my travels to different parts of the world, I’ve regularly been confronted with an assortment of clichés and claims about this country, one of which is that Qatar has no sports history.
My answer to those people and critics is simple: they need to look and listen a little closer; every country has a sports history of which it is proud. And it all has to begin somewhere. You can hear the pride in every word my father pronounces as he speaks about his own past in Germany, and his past in Qatar.
“The first sports highlight for the country was in 1981,” he recalled, “when Qatar’s football players reached the final of the Under 20 World Championships in Australia, losing only against West Germany in the final.
“Football enjoyed a special place in people’s hearts after that, and we regularly played pick-up games against the hugely popular Brazilian coach Evaristo and his coaching staff. One day, I lobbed the ball over him to score a terrific goal.” My father smiled fondly again at the recollection of the shot putter beating the footballer.
From those early matches between coaches, a steady progression in Qatar began at regional, continental and finally international level.
“At the time I arrived, Kuwait was the top nation in the Gulf area for athletics, but then within two years we were able to win the GCC Championship, and that was a turning point.
“We had the constant support of the government for sport, and the progression was continuous, up to Asian level and then, the world stage. By 1992, Qatar won the first bronze medal at the Olympic Games in Barcelona in athletics. Look at the country now: we have a double Olympic medallist in the high jump, Mutaz Barshim.”
A key element for his rapid adaption to the new culture was to learn from others and respect them at the same time as he passed on his sporting knowledge to his new athletes.
“Of the ten athletes there was one, Abdullah Said, who spoke English, but only two words: yes and no. The others all spoke Arabic. To make myself understood, I had to make an effort.
“We reached an agreement where I spoke to them in English, and they spoke to me in Arabic. It worked out really well, because we both learned something new and I was able to pick up Arabic very quickly.”
A constant curiosity and passion for learning has been something that I’ve seen coupled with an incredible attention to detail and meticulous organisation in my father throughout the past three and a half decades.
When I ask him if he was surprised by Qatar’s rapid sporting development since 1982, he immediately shook his head.
“Like at the start when I came in 1982, sport today, is a vehicle to develop Qatar and Qatari athletes. Hosting the 2022 World Cup will be the logical consequence of Qatar’s Vision 2030, and I am sure one day the Olympic Games will come here, too.
“It is a fantastic strategy to position Qatar as a sport nation which will have a future after oil and gas. With every mega event you learn something new. Qatar is ideally situated in the middle of the world, and I think it will be a smooth operation here in 2022.”
Over the years, he has seen his athletes win countless medals, been on the track as Qatar started to host the best athletes in the world from 1997 for the Athletics Grand Prix and Diamond League, and even walked in with the Qatar national team at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games — fulfilling a lifelong dream.
In 2006, the Asian Games in Doha were centred around his beloved Khalifa Stadium. Even now my father still goes to Khalifa Stadium — or rather the athletics field next to it because the stadium is currently under construction ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup — every day to watch the athletes train.
So what made him decide to stay on and on?
“My family grew up in peaceful surroundings here, the kids went to school and even came back after their further education in Europe. Over the years, I’ve made a lot of friends. Since it is a small country, I have friends in all of the main families. The country also has the ideal weather for what became one of my hobbies; fossil hunting in the desert.”
This year, my father crossed the desert from Doha to Dukhan for another special journey.
It was in the small town on the other side of the Peninsula from Doha where the country’s first ever football tournament took place — I know this little detail because I’m currently conducting research for a book I’m writing on the history of football in Qatar.
My father’s journey was filled with great excitement. He came to visit his newborn granddaughter, my second child, and the second generation of our family to be born in Qatar.
And so, 35 years after his arrival, my father is still here in Qatar, the country he has grown to love and watch develop a whole host of world-class athletes and sports men and women. Only now, the suitcases in his storage cupboard are filled, both with sports equipment and, more importantly, treasured family memories.
CHERISHED JOURNEY: Joachim Krug in front of the Aspire Tower.
