Meso Hassouna Secures Gold After Impressive Clean and Jerk Performance at IWF Grand Prix II

Elbakh Fares Ibrahim E. H. most commonly known as Meso Hassouna presented himself in his own land to show all his lifting prowess to his people competing in the men’s 102 kg category in Doha, Qatar.

The Qatari lifter’s journey to the Gold medal in total started with a successful 172 kg snatch, then went back to the bar for his second attempt of a 176 kg snatch, he snatched it for what looked like a smooth and solid lift, he put 180 kg on the table for his third attempt, as did Karapetyan, the Armenian lifter for his second.

First came Elbakh for his third attempt at a 179, as he changed it before stepping to the platform kg snatch. He got to the platform and walked from side to side like a hungry lion, hyping himself of as his time was running, centered himself in front of the bar and with a roar got close to it, pulled it, pulled under but missed it forward, and with a smile on his face he left and continued to the Clean and Jerk.

For the next lift Fares had the highest weight written on the table, as he was going to attempt 220 kg for his first attempt, after most his opponents had lifted all their attempts, Elbakh waited patiently for his turn, almost all the athletes were already done, Fares went back to the table and added one more kilo to his first attempt, making it 221 kg and easily clean and jerking it

Then for his second attempt he lifted 224 kg, that only left Liu and him to fight for gold in Clean and Jerk, Liu attempted 225 kg but missed the Clean, that made Fares attempt 232 kg but only managed to pull it from the floor and let go of it with a loud laugh.

With 176 kg for Snatch and 224 kg for Clean and Jerk Fares Elbakh came on top of the leaderboard with a 400 kg total, 2 kg ahead of Lui and 9 kg ahead of Karapetyan and adding another gold to the list of his career achievements.

About Fares Ibrahim Elbakh

Also known as Meso Hassouna, Fares Ibrahim Elbakh is a Qatari weightlifter, Olympic Champion and two time Junior World Champion competing in the 85 kg, and 94 kg (until 2018) and 96 kg  categories.. He holds the junior record in the clean and jerk 225 kg and total 397 kg in the 96 kg division.

For those curious about more details on Fares Ibrahim Elbakh’s performance in the IWF Grand Prix II click on our recap of the 102 category and on our day to day recap and analisis to get more on all categories competing.