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