In the midst of the precarious political divisions and the random terrorist attacks that Lebanon has been witnessing, we are striving to draw some optimism out of the Lebanese sports sector, especially after the enormous success achieved by Lebanese basketball both on the regional and international level, namely last summer during the World Team Championships; in addition to a number of other achievements recorded by Lebanese athletes during the Qatar Asian Games i.e. Jean- Claude Rabbath, high-jump gold medalist and Cosette Basbous, taekwondo silver medalist as well as the outstanding performance of attack player Reda Antar and defense player Yusuf Mohamad of the German team S.C Freiburg during the German Football League.

In fact, the sports sector in Lebanon has become a painful reflection of the challenging political and economic situation the country is suffering from: today, in an attempt to keep the game away from confessional and sectarian frictions amongst spectators, only the players can be found in football pitches and all sports associations are governed by politics.

The deteriorating economic situation has also affected booming team sports activities mainly basketball since financial supporters have backed up which resulted in the disappearance of renowned clubs such as Tadamon-Zouk, Kahraba and Sadaka and the decline of other clubs such as the Hikmeh Club after the departure of Mr. Antoine Choueiry who was behind this team’s great achievements in winning the Asian Cup more than once and being the first Asian team to participate in the MacDonald’s Basketball Championship alongside the NBA champion.

The Lebanese sports sector is today in a critical situation facing huge challenges. It can either go back to the competency level that was achieved before 1975, upon the beginning of the Lebanese war, and modestly start off from scratch which will pull down the Lebanese teams to the weakest positions on the Arab and regional scene and make it impossible for them to recover; or rely on private sector sponsors and financial supporters to resume its rise to high levels of professionalism and competency following the late 90’s and early 2000 trend during which it

achieved unexpectedly fast results, because public funding is no longer sufficient for sports on the international level.

The Lebanese athlete’s strong-will and longing for challenges allowed him to qualify to the Basketball World Championships twice in a row and achieve historical results last summer by winning over the French team while Lebanon was under attack by Israel.

Furthermore, Lebanon has always pioneered the Arab initiative to host sports events: it was the first country in the region to plan hosting a Formula 1 circuit in the Ramlet Al Bayda area. It also succeeded in including the Rallye of Lebanon in the Middle East Championship as one of its most beautiful stages, on the Worldwide Rally calendar.

However, these projects never saw the light of day due to many factors and the ideas and dreams of Lebanese pioneers were executed by other Arab countries: the Formula 1 is currently being held in Bahrain and will then take place in Abu Dhabi in 2009 and Jordan will be hosting one of the Worldwide Rally Championships’ stages as of next season.

This is the fate of sports in Lebanon: leading ideas that were never destined to be implemented and that relocated to neighboring countries, a passion for challenge that never finds any support and an enforced oppression of talents…Yet, our only hope remains alive thanks to Lebanese talents that will never give up waiting for the needed means to see the light of day.