Baku: Mubarak Zayid won the men’s singles tennis bronze on the last day of the fourth Islamic Solidarity Games yesterday, as Qatar finished the event with impressive haul of 12 medals – two gold, three silver and seven bronze.
Zayid waltzed through the opening set 6-0 against Amine Ahouda before the Moroccan retired in the second set to give the Qatari bronze medal at the Baku Tennis Academy. Earlier, Zayid had lost to Turkey’s Anil Yuksel 3-6, 2-6 in the semi-finals on Sunday.
Altug Celikbilek and Ayla Aksu clinched the men’s and women’s singles gold medals in tennis. Turkey was already assured of gold in both singles as it was all Turkey finals.  The Games came to a close with the hosts Azerbaijan topping the medals table after an 11-day long tussle with neighbours Turkey. The next Solidarity Games will be held in Istanbul in 2021. Oddly enough, the Azeri team came up empty handed in terms of gold medals on the final day of action, the only time that had happened during the Games.
But on the back of a superb Sunday which culminated in football gold, Azerbaijan were all but assured of top spot with a 75-68 lead and just 11 golds on offer yesterday.
Turkey edged closer by bagging both tennis singles titles and adding one from the wushu martial arts, but that still left them four golds adrift at 75-71. The Turks had the consolation of ending up with the highest overall – gold, silver and bronze – medal haul with 195 to 162.
Iran had a strong finish to the Games, winning eight of the last 11 golds, six of those coming in wushu and they consolidated third place in the medals list with 39 golds and 98 in total. They were simply unstoppable in the wushu sanda events, underlining their supremacy by winning all of their bouts and storming to six of seven gold medals available.
Azerbaijan had to settle for three silvers at the Baku Sports Hall after losing all of their finals to the implacable Iranians. The only gold to escape the Iranian stranglehold came in the 48kg division, in which there was no Iranian fighter. Turkey’s Mehmet Demirci took advantage to dominate Kyrgyzstan’s Turatbek Sulaimankul in the final.
Iran also won both gold medals in the table tennis, the final gold medals of the games to be decided. The men’s outfit of Alamian brothers Noshad and Nima, as well as Afshin Noroozi, got the better of Turkey 3-1, after the women’s trio had claimed a gripping 3-1 victory over hosts Azerbaijan in the first final.
Related Story