Wrestling with their limitations

In a cramped hall barely larger than a living room in the working-class Nile Delta city of El Mansoura, girls grapple, tumble and clamber to their feet again on worn mats, their laughter and shouts echoing off the peeling walls.

While Egypt celebrates its Olympic medals in wrestling, weightlifting and other sports, thousands of young athletes outside the capital toil away in tiny clubs like this one, 135 kilometers from Cairo, and far from any major sporting hubs.

Yet the al-Shal and Manshiya club has produced national champions in wrestling and judo, and one of its teenage stars is set to represent Egypt at the Youth Olympics.

Its achievements come despite chronic underfunding, outdated equipment, and a lack of regular government support.

While Egypt's population grew by almost a third between 2011 and 2023, the number of sports clubs there fell by more than four percent, according to data from state statistics agency CAPMAS.

Most clubs are privately run, and resources remain thin.

A spokesperson for the youth and sports ministry, Mohamed al-Shazly, said Egypt gives "full and comprehensive financial and in-kind support to clubs" but it does so based on available resources and the ministry's plans, and is routed through each game's federation.

The federations, however, often have to channel that funding to the national teams only.

"If you have 1,000 athletes for example, you pick the best 10 to sponsor, as they represent Egypt," said Ibrahim Moustafa, secretary-general of the Egyptian Wrestling Federation.

"The club itself has to finance equipment and training for the other players," he added.

This is what makes clubs like al-Shal seem miraculous.

"Limited resources, immense achievements," said coach Mahmoud al-Wafaa'i, who is unpaid and trains the girls out of self-professed love for the sport.

"The hall is only 3.5 by 3.5 meters ... practically impossible to create one champion in. Yet we produce champions."

Al-Shal is emblematic of broader structural problems across Egypt. CAPMAS data show that in many governorates, government-run clubs employ far more administrative staff than trainers.

Still, al-Shal's Rodaina Ahmed Gamal, 15, a national gold medalist who has qualified for the 2026 Dakar Youth Olympics, says she prefers training there than at other larger clubs she can access.

"There are about 20 of us in a small hall here, and you feel like we're all looking out for each other," Rodaina said.

Her mother, Rasha Mahmoud, said the club provides the space and the coach, but families are strained covering almost everything else.

"Rodaina might enter three championships in one month. Three registrations, three weigh-ins, three stays. I pay for that," she said.

For older athletes like Nadia Hazem Mahmoud, 20, now in her second year at university, the barriers are also social. "People say: 'How can a girl do wrestling?' I've taken it up as a hobby. And, when I felt I was achieving things in it, I loved the sport," she said.

The strength they gain from the sport also helps the girls protect themselves mentally and physically, Rasha said.

Wafaa'i said Rodaina's success had helped attract younger girls, building a base of more than a dozen trainees under the age of 12, providing a positive outlet for them in their low-income neighborhood.

Egypt sent 148 athletes to the Paris 2024 Olympics and won three medals in pentathlon, fencing and weightlifting. But in El Mansoura, far from the Olympic ceremonies, the future of women's sports still depends on clubs like al-Shal.

As Rodaina put it: "I started here, so I want to finish here. I want to say I brought an African medal from al-Shal club."

Reuters