Olympic medal history
Medal total: 0
Medals per head: 0
Olympic debut: 1984
Total Games appearances: 7
No Bangladeshi athlete has ever qualified for the Olympics, and the country only sends athletes thanks to the wild-card process. In 2008 athletes competed in swimming, running and shooting.
Star performers
Swimmer Doli Akhter has competed in three Olympic Games, making her one of the country’s most experienced athletes. Syque Caesar will represent the country in artistic gymnastics and hope to win their first Olympic medal after winning silver in the South Asian Championships.
Md Mahfizur Rahman competes in SWIMMING
Rahman Md Mahfizur, aptly nicknamed ‘Sagar’ couldn’t be more excited about the upcoming Olympics. He was ecstatic with joyous disbelief when he was handed a wildcard place to compete at the London Olympics 2012 by the Bangladesh Olympic Association.
The Olympic Opening ceremony marks the point at which many athletes’ dreams start to soar and take shape. For others like Rahman Mahfizur, it is about as good as the Games will get.
If the 19-year-old Bangladesh flagbearer is tempted to linger perhaps a little longer than some of the others, it might be because he knows it is his only chance to stand in the limelight.
There will be 204 nations represented in Friday’s ceremony, with South Sudan and Netherlands Antilles athletes parading under the Olympic flag, and some 80 of them have never won a medal at either a winter or Summer Olympics.
Bangladesh, one of the most densely inhabited countries on Earth with a population reckoned to be close to 150 million, is the biggest of the non-medallists but is fielding just five athletes in London.
Mahfizur, a public servant swimming the 50m freestyle in his first Olympics, is living a dream nonetheless – the dream of modern Games founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin who declared that “the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”
Sharmin Akter Ratna, Bangladesh’s lone shooter in the London Olympics, is set to take part in the 10m Air Rifle event at the Royal Artillery Barracks in London on Saturday.
Ratna, who has been undergoing extensive training in Bristol under Bangladeshi coach Shoyebuzzaman for more than two months, will be among 55 shooters from different countries taking part in the event.
The 24-year old lady from Magura won the 10m Air Rifle gold in the 2010 South Asian Games in Dhaka with a record mark of 499.4 points. Later that year, she won gold in the same event in the Commonwealth Shooting Championships held in New Delhi.
Ratna, one of the five athletes from Bangladesh; all of whom went on wild cards — is considered to be the best chance for Bangladesh to put up a good show in this year’s Olympics.
Wild cards are given to those countries who fail to qualify directly for the mega extravaganza.
Bangladesh’s best female shooter has been in good form of late and has adapted well with the weather conditions in England, and is expected to better her best score of 503.3 which she set in 2010 SA Games.
Quazi Syque Caesar ,Gymnastics – Artistic
At age 6, Syque Caesar started tumbling at the Academy of Olympic Gymnastics in the former Orange Blossom Mall in Fort Pierce.
“I used to jump around and do cartwheels a lot when I was a little kid,” he wrote from London on Friday via email. “My parents enrolled me right away, and I’ve been at it ever since.”
Now, at age 21, Caesar will be pursuing the gold for Bangladesh on Saturday at the Olympics.
“When I was a kid, I definitely thought about it all the time, and it was my big goal to make it to the Olympics,” he wrote. “I am so fortunate to have made it this far today.”
The former Port St. Lucie resident and current University of Michigan senior battled several injuries throughout his career and obtained dual citizenship from his parents’ homeland to be a part of the Bangladesh Olympic Gymnastics Team.
In fact, he’ll compete injured Saturday. He tore the tendon in his left biceps earlier this month.
Still, he stuck with gymnastics “for love of the sport.”
“It’s what I know best, and I can’t imagine my life without gymnastics,” he wrote.
Caesar was born in West Palm Beach after his parents came to the United States in search of “the American dream.” The family, which also includes Caesar’s older sister and younger brother, moved to St. Lucie County in 1995.
He attended Lawnwood Elementary School in Fort Pierce and Morningside Elementary in Port St. Lucie before he graduated from Lincoln Park Academy in Fort Pierce.
However, Caesar didn’t have many gymnastics training facility options. After the mall closed when he was 11, Caesar bounced around to Royal Gymnastics Academy and All Around Gymnastics, both in Port St. Lucie, and The Gymnastics Revolution in West Palm Beach before his dad, Quazi, a former professional soccer player in Bangladesh, became his full-time trainer.
“It got serious pretty much as soon as I started competing,” Caesar wrote. “My dad was always a proponent of me going as far as I could with gymnastics, and he always made it a big deal.”
Despite major injuries — ruptured ACL in the right knee his junior year of high school, torn meniscus in the right knee his freshman year of college, blown ACL in the left knee his sophomore year of college and ruptured tendon in his right biceps his senior year of college — Caesar was last year’s Big Ten Parallel Bar Champion.
Even though he hasn’t had much time to explore London and the Olympic Village yet because of his intense training schedule, he’s been using social media, such as Twitter, to keep a kind of journal about his experience.
