Olympedia – Bahrain (BRN)

The Bahrain National Olympic Committee was organized in 1978 and provisionally recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at the IOC session in Montevideo, in April 1979. Full recognition followed at a meeting of the IOC Executive Board in Nagoya, in October 1979. Bahrain has competed at all Olympic Games since 1984, but has not yet competed at the Olympic Winter Games. Bahrain athletes have competed in ten sports / disciplines – athletics, boxing, cycling, fencing, handball, modern pentathlon, sailing, shooting, swimming, and wrestling.

In 2008, Moroccan-born middle distance runner Rashid Ramzi finished first in the men’s 1,500 metres, but he lost his gold medal due to doping one year later. In 2012, the Ethiopian-born Maryam Jamal won the first medal for Bahrain, with bronze in the women’s 1,500 metres. In 2016, Bahrain won two medals, both won by Kenyan-born women, with Ruth Jebet winning gold in the 3,000 m steeplechase and Eunice Kirwa winning silver in the marathon. At Tokyo 2020, Kalkidan Gezahegne (another Ethiopian-born) brought another medal to Bahrain, by finishing second in the women’s 10,000 metres.