2021 has been an amazing year for sports activities worldwide, and this includes the Maldives. After a long break due to Covid-19, sports and other activities started gradually resurfacing last year. Tournaments were restarted and athletes started getting back their spirit. 2021 has been an especially successful year for Maldivian female athletes. We are going to be talking about some of them.

Fathmath Dheema Ali, Maldives’ young talented table tennis player got the chance to play in the World Junior Table Tennis Championship in the under 15 categories. She even won a match in the Mixed Doubles Event. Dheema and her partner Martin Sip won their match against Australia. This was the first time a Maldivian player had qualified for this tournament.

Hawwa Eshal Riyaz had participated in the 4th Asian Youth Para Games last year. 800 athletes under the age of 23 participated in this tournament. This was the first time that a Maldivian athlete participated in an international para-badminton event. During the tournament, Eshal won her Women's Singles SH6 Round Robin Match against Shormi Mozumder of Bangladesh in straight games 21-18, 21-13. This was the first win for Maldives in a Para-Badminton event.

The Maldivian badminton twin Duo Nabaaha and Nabeeha are two people that we absolutely cannot leave talking about. Nabaaha and Nabeeha have been winning awards for Maldives internationally for years now. This year, Nabaaha and Nabeeha had participated in the Bangladesh International Challenge and won the bronze medal in this tournament. And to add up to this, they both were qualified for the 2021 BWF World Championship in Spain last month. Unfortunately, they were unable to attend this event as they were unable to get the Visas.

These are not all, others like Aayaa in surfing, Hamna in swimming, and many other female athletes had an exceptional year. 2021 was a great year for woman’s sports in general and we believe that 2022 will be the same if not better.