Egyptian wrestlers keep vanishing abroad amid a sport in crisis
Two wrestlers have become the latest to flee while abroad, drawing a wave of sympathy as well as legal threats.
Cairo, Egypt – Four days after he disappeared from the Egyptian team camp at the 2026 Under-20 World Wrestling Championships in Slovakia last month, 19-year-old wrestler Ziad Hajjaj Abu Gabal posted a message on Facebook.
“I don’t want my mother and father to be upset with me,” he wrote on August 29. “I did this so I could see myself as a man. I won’t go back to Egypt, my beloved country, until I bring it honour.
“Everything I earn in a month is 700 Egyptian pounds [$13.7], and I’m an international [athlete] … After all this pressure, there was no way I could go back.”
“I would take the same decision again and again and I advise Egypt’s international players to focus on their training and acquire their rights because it’s their lives that are being wasted.”