Hisham Greiss
Hisham Fouad Greiss (Arabic: هشام فؤاد جريس) is a retired male track and field athlete from Egypt, one of only a few Egyptian athletes to have won gold medals at the African athletic events. Along with his colleagues Nagui Asaad, Hassan Ahmed Hamad and Mohamed Naguib Hamed, Greiss formed one of the strongest Egyptian teams in throw events.
Achievements
Twice Gold medalist in Hammer throw, of East and Central African Championships 1981, 1982
Olympic Games
Hisham Greiss never competed in any of the Summer Olympic Games due to boycotts surrounding the games.
1976 Summer Olympics, after arrival to Montréal, Egypt withdrew from the Games as part of the anti-apartheid boycott. This was due to that in 1972 and 1976 a large number of African countries threatened the IOC with a boycott to force them to ban South Africa and Rhodesia, because of their segregationist regimes. New Zealand was also one of the African boycott targets, due to the "All Blacks" (national rugby team) having toured apartheid-ruled South Africa. The IOC conceded in the first two cases, but refused to ban New Zealand on the grounds that rugby was not an Olympic sport. Fulfilling their threat, twenty African countries were joined by Guyana and Iraq in a Tanzania-led withdrawal from the Montreal Games, after a few of their athletes had already competed.
