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Olympics

Let the blame begin: Egypt’s medal count riles president

By Jeffrey Fleishman
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CAIRO —  You will not hear the chimes of Olympic medals in Egypt’s trophy cases.

The country won only one in the Beijing Games. That embarrassment has riled President Hosni Mubarak, who has ordered an investigation into why his athletes fared so poorly.

The state news agency has reported that Mubarak has ordered a committee to find out “who is responsible for the Egyptian mission’s bad performance and calling them into account.”

Someone’s going to be in trouble. But it most probably won’t be Mounir Thabet, the head of the country’s Olympic Committee. He’s the president’s brother-in-law. It also won’t be Hesham Mesbah. He’s the only one of Egypt’s 177 Olympic athletes to win a medal, a bronze in judo.

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-- Jeffrey Fleishman

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Jeffrey Fleishman

Jeffrey Fleishman is a senior writer at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was the foreign and national editor. A 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Fleishman was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. A longtime foreign correspondent, he served as bureau chief for The Times in Cairo and Berlin, and was previously based in Rome for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also was a writer on film, art and culture. Fleishman has been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a finalist for the Center for Public Integrity’s Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. He is the author of five novels, including “Good Night, Forever” and “Last Dance.”

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