Jordan’s Country Profile
Official country name: Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
Area: 35,637 sq miles (92,300 sq km)
Population: 6 million (2007 est.); as of Dec. 2006, 1.9 million registered Palestinian refugees lived in Jordan, 328,000 of them in refugee camps. Overall, Palestinians, including non-refugees, comprise an estimated 55% to 70% of the population.
Median age: 23.5
Ethnic Groups: Arab 98 percent, Armenian 1 percent, others, 1 percent
GDP and GDP per capita: $14.3 billion and $2,488 (2006 estimates)
Read a complete country profile of Jordan
Jordan’s Olympic History
First time represented at Summer Olympics: 1980
Gold medals won: 0
Silver: 0
Bronze: 0
Medals at 2008 Beijing Olympics: 0
Jordan’s Olympic Playbook
NBC Sports’ profile of Jordan’s Olympic “outlook” is as brusque as it is inelegant: “Jordon is not expected to contend for a medal at the Beijing Games.” And yes, NBC misspells the country’s name, as if a nation of 6 million whose history predates that of the United States by about 6,000 years isn’t worth a spell-check. And as if the Olympics are about nothing more than “medaling.” Someone should tell NBC that Vince Lombardi isn’t running this show.
Take Jordan’s Zeina Shaban, and tell me if she isn’t worth rooting for, medal or no medal. She picked up her first table tennis bat when she was six years old. She’s been at it for 14 years, which makes her all of 20. Before turning 10, she won She won Jordan’s Under-14 Championship, the American Open and Sweden’s Safirs Tournament. By the time she was 15 she’d wonm Jordan’s Athlete of the Year award. This will be her second Olympics as a participant. She was actually at the Atlanta games in 1996, where she met China’s Deng Yaping, world champion in table tennis at the time. That did it. She decided then and there that she’d make her own way to the Olympics. And she has. Watch her during the opening ceremonies: she’ll be flying Jordan’s flag, at the head of that kingdom’s delegation of seven athletes.
“It’s the speed and the adrenalin, and the constant ups and downs in every game,” she tells an unnamed International Olympic Committee reporter. “You can be winning, then you’re losing, then you’re winning again. It’s a rollercoaster, and that’s what I like about it.”
NBC might rethink the way it ranks excitement.
Jordan’s Athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics
Equestrian
Ibrahim Bisharat
Swimming
Anas Hamadeh
Razan Taha
Table Tennis
Zeina Shaban
Taekwondo
Nadin Dawani
Track & Field/Athletics
Khalil Al Hanahneh
Baraah Awadallah
