First Lebanese competitor at Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, Samer Tawk finishes his race in 107th place

BEIRUT — The first of two qualified Lebanese skiers to compete at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, Samer Tawk took part Friday in the men's 10-kilometer individual cross-country ski race on the Tesero stadium track, located in the town of Lago in Italy's Dolomites.

Born in Bsharri (North Lebanon), he finished the race in 107th place out of 113 participants, with a time of 29 minutes and 50 seconds. He thus ended 9 minutes and 13 seconds behind the winner, Norway's Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, who was joined on the podium by France's Mathis Desloges, the silver medalist, and another Norwegian, Einar Hedegart, who took bronze.

Struggling to compete with European athletes — given the limits of Lebanon’s infrastructure for skiers compared to the mountains of the Old Continent — Tawk, who trains year-round in Lebanon in addition to some training camps abroad, was also measuring himself against other skiers from regional countries.

The 27-year-old Lebanese skier finished 14 places behind the Iranian, Danyal Saveh Shemshaki (93rd), but posted a better time than Saudi Arabia’s Rakan Alireza (109th) and Israel’s Attila Mihaly Kertesz (110th).

Beyond his final ranking, the main thing for Tawk was above all to be able to return to the level he displayed eight years earlier, before his terrible 14-meter fall in 2019 that nearly left him paralyzed for life and ended his career.

At his first Olympic appearance, before the accident, during the 2018 Games in Pyeongshang, South Korea, he had finished the race in 105th place. At the time, the men's 10-kilometer event did not exist, he had completed 15 kilometers in 47 minutes, 3 seconds.

Lebanon must now wait for the debut of its second representative, Andrea al-Hayek, who will compete Monday at the start of the men's downhill in alpine skiing.