Paris Olympics: Donia Abu Taleb goes from fighting boys to making Saudi history

Saudi taekwondo stand-out Donia Abu Taleb had an unusual introduction to the sport: for years she trained at a boys’ club because there were no girls to compete with.

Now the 27-year-old has become the first Saudi Arabian woman to qualify for the Olympics and is dreaming of bringing home the Gulf kingdom’s first gold medal when she competes in Paris.

Though her smiling face today appears on posters and billboards, underscoring Saudi officials’ recent push to champion women’s athletics, the Jeddah native had much humbler beginnings.

“I started taekwondo when I was eight years old and there was no support like now,” Abu Taleb, who also has a law degree, said after a recent training session in the southern mountain city of Abha.

“I always played with the boys in the boys’ centre, originally without girls. I used to wear a head-covering on my hair so as not to show that I was a girl.”