Gamal in action during a training session at Manshiya club in El Mansoura, Egypt. — Photos: Reuters
In a cramped hall barely larger than a living room in the working-class Nile Delta city of Mansoura, girls grapple, tumble and clamber to their feet again on worn mats, their laughter and shouts echoing off the peeling walls.
Thousands of young athletes outside the capital of Egypt toil away in tiny clubs like this one, 135km 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Its achievements come despite chronic underfunding, outdated equipment and a lack of regular government support.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 went down by more than 4%, according to data from state statistics agency Capmas.
Most clubs are privately run, and resources remain thin.
Trainees at the one-room Manshiya club.
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.
“If you have 1,000 players 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 3.5m by 3.5m (...) practically impossible to create one champion in. Yet we produce champions.”
Young atheletes during a training session.
Building a base
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 medallist 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.
Young girls in action during a judo training session.
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 play 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 an outlet for them in their low-income neighbourhood.
Egypt sent 148 athletes to the Paris 2024 Olympics and won three medals in pentathlon, fencing and weightlifting. But in Mansoura, far from the Olympic ceremonies, the future of women’s sport 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
