Aya Mohammed wins table tennis gold as Qatar tops 100 medals at GCC Games
Aya Mohammed’s 3-1 final win lifted Qatar’s table tennis haul to six medals and helped the hosts push past 100 at the GCC Games.
Aya Mohammed beat compatriot Mariam Ali 3-1 in the women’s singles final and gave Qatar another gold as the host nation surged past the 100-medal mark at the GCC Games Doha 2026.
The result helped push Qatar’s overall haul to 109 medals, with 39 gold, 38 silver and 32 bronze, a total that kept the hosts comfortably atop the standings with the competition scheduled to run through May 22 in Doha. The Games have drawn about 1,400 male and female athletes from six GCC countries across 17 sports, and table tennis has been one of the clearest medal sources in Qatar’s climb.
Aya Mohammed’s title was part of a six-medal table tennis campaign for Team Qatar that produced two golds, two silvers and two bronzes. Her win over Mariam Ali delivered gold and silver in the women’s singles, while Mohammed Abdulwahab and Aya Mohammed had already taken mixed doubles gold a day earlier. Abdullah Abdulwahab and Mariam Ali added mixed doubles bronze, and Qatar opened the event with bronze in the men’s team competition.
The men’s doubles final brought another silver for the host side, with Mohammed Abdulwahab and Abdullah Abdulwahab falling 3-0 to Saudi Arabia’s Ali Al Khudrawi and Abdulaziz Boushalibi. Even in defeat, the pair’s run to the final underlined the depth of Qatar’s program, which now is producing medals in both singles and doubles across the draw.
For Aya Mohammed, the gold added to a rapid rise that has already changed the profile of Qatari women’s table tennis. She became the first Qatari woman to win the Arab women’s singles title in Casablanca in September 2025, and her partnership with Mohammed Abdulwahab reached the ITTF mixed doubles top 100 in January 2025, another first in Qatar’s history. Those milestones gave her Doha win added weight, because they showed the final was not an isolated breakthrough but part of a sustained climb.
Qatar’s table tennis story also has longer roots. Li Ping was the first Qatari table tennis player to compete at the Olympic Games, at Rio 2016, while Aya Majdi became the first Qatari woman to compete in Olympic table tennis at London 2012. In Doha, those earlier markers looked less like milestones sitting in the past and more like the foundation for a program now feeding the host nation’s medal surge.
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