The Kuwait Olympic Committee, is touting the results of its new elections as a step forward for the Middle Eastern country. Specifically, the committee elected H.E. Sheikh Fahad Nasser Sabah Ahmad Al Sabah along with a young Board of Directors to lead the organization forward. The new elections are expected to coincide with the lifting of the IOC ban.
The IOC suspended Kuwait on October 27th, 2015 as a result of government interference in the activity of sports. This was the 2nd time this decade that Kuwait was suspended for similar activities, although this time it cost them official participation in the 2016 Olympic Games (their athletes marched and competed under a neutral Olympic flag).
Kuwait hopes that an influx of youth into the Board of Directors of the Olympic Committee will change the international perception. The average age of members of the Board of Directors is now 32, which the KOC says “reflects the KOC’s desire to usher in a new generation to lead the Olympic Movement in Kuwaitand provide fresh and new perspectives on how best to serve sport in the country.”
Among the new appointees is Faye Sultan, the Chair of the Athletes Committee. She is a 2-time Olympian (2012, 2016) and the first-ever Kuwaiti female Olympic swimmer.
The new president, just the 3rd to serve in the role, is the head of the Kuwait MotorCross Committee and previously served in the Kuwait military as an Apache helicopter pilot. He studied in Switzerland before earning a degree in Business Administration and Marketing Management from the American University of Kuwait.
The controversial laws that earned Kuwait its numerous suspensions revolve around the autonomy of sports in the country, particularly the Government’s right to dissolve sports clubs, federations, and even the KOC. As reported by Around the Rings in July of 2016, Kuwait imposed severe penalties for anybody that broke its sports law, including a prison sentence of up to three years and fines of up to $15,000 for violators. Kuwait’s sports minister, Sheikh Salman Sabah Salem Al-Hmoud Al-Sabah, was given the power to dissolve groups, appoint leadership, and issue final decisions of appeals. In 2016 Kuwait dissolved its national sports federations, including the KOC, and replaced them with new organizations, which the IOC refused to recognize.
Sporting federations in Kuwait have found themselves at odds with the Government as well as larger international federations such as FIFA, FINA, the AOC and the IOC as various cases of corruption have been revealed. Last summer only weeks prior to the FINA Congress in Budapest, Hungary, during the 2017 FINA World Aquatics Championships, the Kuwait Swimming Association (KSA) issued a letter to FINA requesting that it remove Kuwaiti representative and FINA First Vice President Husain Al-Musallam be from his post within FINA. Cornel Marculescu, FINA’s Executive Director, denied the KSA’s requests and even called the KSA and its recognized leadership as of July 2017 “irrelevant for FINA.”
The KSA claimed that allowing Al-Musallam to retain his seat on the FINA Bureau and to run for re-election as FINA First Vice President infringed upon the “sovereignty” of Kuwait and the KSA, and that it demonstrated preferential treatment of Al-Musallam by protecting him.
Kuwait has never won a medal in swimming at the Summer Olympics, though two Kuwaiti swimmers competed at the 2016 Olympic Games under universality invites. Abbas Qali finished 36th in the men’s 100 fly with a time of 54.64, while Faye Sultan finished 54th in the women’s 50 free in 26.86.