Low salaries, financial hardship drive Egyptian national wrestlers to flee

Egyptian national freestyle wrestling team member Ziad Haggag, who fled during his participation in the World Youth Wrestling Championships in Slovakia, revealed that he receives a monthly salary of only 700 Egyptian pounds ($14).

This week, wrestler Mohamed El-Shami also disappeared, slipping away during a stopover in Rome as the national team delegation made its way back to Cairo from the Mediterranean Games.

Both cases have prompted MP Maha Abdel Nasser to submit a parliamentary question demanding the government explain the real reasons behind the recurring disappearance of athletes, and what it plans to do about it.

Haggag explained his decision in a post on his official Facebook account, writing that he did it “so I could see myself as a man.” He added: “I won’t return to my beloved Egypt except as someone who honors it.”

The post was also an appeal for forgiveness. “My father has struggled so much because of me. I’ve cost him a great deal, and he has seven other children besides me,” Haggag wrote. “There was no choice but to return to Egypt with a medal. God willing, it will happen. I wanted to reassure you — God willing, I’ll come back to Egypt a champion.”

He described traveling to Slovakia alone from Cairo airport, with no one from the delegation accompanying him. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I called them, went to the championship, and competed. I was injured in my right rib but insisted on playing to achieve my dream and bring home a medal for Egypt. I apologize to my coaches. None of this is your fault.”

Haggag closed the message by taking full responsibility: “I take responsibility for this decision. After all this pressure, there was no way I could go back.”

El-Shami’s message, posted to Instagram on Aug. 29, struck a similar note. He apologized to his father and family “for everything that happened”

“I never wanted to reach this point,” El-Shami wrote, explaining that watching his father struggle was what drove him to flee. “I felt my father was exhausted, that life had become too hard for him. I’m the eldest of my siblings, so someone had to sacrifice and take responsibility.”

“I found myself grown up, no longer able to ask my father for anything,” he added. “The support I get doesn’t let me live with dignity, and I have to secure my own future. That isn’t possible right now, so this had to happen.”

For MP Abdel Nasser, the two cases point to something bigger than individual hardship. In her parliamentary question to the prime minister and minister of youth and sports, she argued that the flight of national team players, or their moves to represent other countries.

It is no longer a matter of isolated individual incidents that can be treated as exceptions, but has become a recurring phenomenon that demands a genuine reckoning with its causes, she said.

Abdel Nasser pointed to an earlier statement by the sports minister that the state had spent roughly $2 million preparing a single gymnastics athlete, and asked how that kind of spending squares with athletes who may still end up unable to secure their future, support a family, or cope with a career-ending injury.

On Aug. 27, the Ministry of Youth and Sports referred both the El-Shami and Haggag cases to the public prosecution for possible legal action. Separately, the Egyptian Olympic Committee has suspended Ibrahim El-Attar, head of the wrestling delegation, and referred him to its ethics committee, after preliminary investigations found negligence and a failure to properly supervise a delegation member.