Husein Alireza Is Only Just Getting Started

After making history at the Olympics, the Saudi rower now has his sights set on something even bigger

October 13, 2022

As Husein Alireza sat nursing a rib injury just two months out from the Tokyo Games, he wondered if this was all really a sign. When it came down to it, after a training programme decimated by injury, illness and the tragic passing of his mother, a major part of him wondered if he really wanted to be Saudi Arabia’s first Olympic rower at all.

He had figured out pretty early in life that he needed structure. To thrive he required deadlines, goals and targets, all of which he found in abundance amongst the Neo-Gothic buildings of Charterhouse School in Surrey, England. Known for its sporting prowess, the prestigious boarding school governed young lives through a regimen of academia and sport, and Alireza loved it, excelling at squash and cross country while playing pretty much any other sport he could get his hands on. Although the four years that followed at Edinburgh University offered him a glimpse of freedom he found uncomfortable (“there was so little work, and I did zero sport”), a post-graduate course at Cambridge brought him rushing back to self. It was there that he found rowing.

What you have to remember is that none of this was meant to happen. Not really. If you’d asked Alireza what he knew about rowing in 2016 you could have written his answer down on a napkin. “I’d have probably said something about Ivy League schools and that I’d seen it on the movie The Social Network,” he says Zooming in with YUNG from his family home in Riyadh, “but really I knew nothing.”

Fast forward five years and he had finished ninth at the Asian Games, picked up a bronze medal at the Asian Indoor Rowing Championships and had qualified for the Olympics. And that wasn’t even the best thing that had come from his going to Cambridge.

“My mother’s father had studied there, so for me to go to Cambridge too was like a dream for her,” he explains. “I actually didn’t tell her that I’d even applied. When I got in I called her up and said, ‘mum, something happened, I have to talk to you.’ I was very serious and she came rushing home – I actually recorded the whole thing. She sat down, very worried, and I put the acceptance letter facedown on the table. She read it and just started crying. It was a golden moment. The first thing she said was ‘go, pray, go thank God.’”

If this was going to go anywhere Bill Barry required just one thing: everything. At around 77 years of age, the former Olympic silver medalist and veteran rowing coach was considering taking on Alireza as one last hurrah. To take the kid from Saudi and do something special. Wouldn’t that be something? But if it was to lead to success it had to be all or nothing.

“Bill had just retired from working with Team GB and was looking for a project. I was the perfect option. An unknown country, something outside of the box. He told me, ‘no girlfriend, no work, I need your full attention, then I think we have a chance at Tokyo.’”

When you think about Olympians your brain conjures up athletes that have committed everything to just make it to the starting block. You think about the 10,000 hours to excellence theory popularised in Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book Outliers. You don’t imagine it can be achieved in around four years by a guy who’d never even tried the sport before.

“At first [rowing at Cambridge] was just for fun, to meet people and socialise. But soon you become addicted. You want to improve marginally every time you’re out there. Your numbers get better, you get fitter, it just becomes this endless pursuit. By the time I reached graduation I had improved faster than any other athlete in college – and my college was Hughes Hall, which is known for producing great rowers. By the end of the year the coach had recommended I think about taking it a little more seriously, maybe even represent my country.”

After writing to a number of rowing clubs, Alireza found Bill, which takes us back to that full-time athlete ultimatum.

Husein Alireza’s life as an Olympic athlete in training could be split neatly into two sections: in London or at a training camp. In the interests of mental survival he would soon become an expert in compartmentalisation. For two years his every decision was governed by one simple question: will this make the boat go faster?

“I’ve been invited to a party. Will it make the boat go faster? No. So don’t go. But while the answer to that is very easy, sticking to it is more difficult. Because of that my life in a training camp was probably easier, even if it was incredibly isolating. In London I had a lot of friends, but it was like I was in a different time zone. Up super early, to bed super early. There were so many temptations but trying to get out after training was just exhausting. A lot of friends didn’t really understand what I was trying to do and I lost touch with so many people. That’s where the compartmentalisation comes in. You become a robot, emotionless. I’m desensitised to FOMO now. I’ve lost count of the number of events and weddings I’ve missed. But you have to be so singular. That was when I realised what it meant to be a full-time athlete.”

You can probably chart the moment everything changed for Husein Alireza to the Asian Games of 2019. While this was where he would meet the Saudi Sports Minister and sow the seeds of the first ever Saudi Rowing Federation, it was also the moment he became aware that his mother was unwell. Noticing a lump in her rib she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma – a terminal bone marrow cancer shortly afterwards.

“When this sort of thing happens you become so unmaterialistic. Nothing else matters. At this point I didn’t care about the Olympics, all I wanted was to be with my mother, but she really didn’t want to be the reason that I stopped rowing. She would tell me this over and over. From then on my rowing became only about her.”

While his newly acquired skill of compartmentalisation helped Alireza continue to train, the Covid delay to the Olympics proved a light out of the most unexpected darkness. Now he was able to pack up his things, leave training, and be with his family.

“We were in a German city called Würzburg where literally nobody spoke English. The hospital food was pretty grim, but we somehow found a Tunisian man living there. We met him at a salmon trailer in the market. It was just so nice to hear somebody speaking Arabic, to be honest, but we also discovered he was the most amazing chef – and my mother loved salmon. This man began cooking for us, so I would head out each day and bring back the food in tupperware. We had this routine and everybody had their role. My mother passed away in August, but in a strange way those months we spent together in Germany were beautiful. We had so much fun together. Now I tell my friends to really appreciate what they have. Maybe their whole family is together on a car journey. Well that trip from A to B would be my idea of heaven. Please don’t take it for granted.”

After suffering a serious stress fracture to the rib and a collapsed lung on the day of qualification, Alireza would still manage to somehow finally qualify for the Olympic Games in Tokyo. He would have the honour of carrying the flag on the day of the opening ceremony and raced in the single skulls category to a creditable quarter final place – even if an illness and injury-hit lead-up (he’d also been diagnosed with Covid just prior to leaving for Tokyo) meant he would lose a considerable 40 seconds from his best. But you could argue that he learned more about himself in the summer that followed.

“I always thought that the summer after the Olympics I was going to really make up for lost time. I would see everybody and travel and go crazy. But it was probably the worst summer of my life. I flew to Marbella to meet a bunch of friends, but I was so lost. I felt that everything I did was wrong. Waking up late, drinking a can of coke, I wouldn’t enjoy it. I was totally disoriented. They call it the post-Olympic blues, but there was more to it than that for me. My mum had passed away and my dad was now at home alone. The guilt was eating me up, even though he would tell me he was fine.”

The blues ultimately hit Alireza much further than he had imagined, stretching way beyond summer holidays. And the more Coach Barry tried to get him back on the water, the less inclined he felt to be there.

“Each month I thought I would be ready but I just kept putting things back. I felt I was done with rowing. I got to the Olympics, made the quarter finals, been the flag bearer. My goal had been Tokyo, not a career. And besides, I had set my heart on coming home and working with my father. Work would be a great way to get closer to him. As it turned out, it was my father who made me row again. By this point he was the President of Saudi Rowing. When I told him I was thinking about quitting he was like, ‘erm, no you’re not. I need you to get me results. Everyone else is a novice.’ I really didn’t see that one coming.”

It doesn’t take too long talking with Alireza to see where his real inspiration lies. People are the motivating factor in almost everything he does. And so it was that people pulled him out of his funk.

“The federation organised a training camp in the UK and asked me to join. Not as a leader, but as someone with experience who people could maybe learn from. All my other training camps had been on my own and were so boring, but this was my first as a team. It made such a difference. Each and every one of them is just an amazing person and, for the first time, it didn’t actually feel like work. I was out of shape – the early numbers were painful – but as I was enjoying it I improved really quickly. I had fallen in love with the sport again, and it felt great.”

While the Olympics may have been, ultimately, for his mother, you could say that his continuation in rowing is now also for his father. “Right now I really just want what’s best for the Federation. And any medal we may win goes under my father’s name. He’s the most important person in my life. Success reflects on him and I really want that.”

Right now, the home of Saudi rowing is a 10-bedroom villa in Riyadh with boats parked in the living room and pool. It’s not the end game – that’s a state-of-the-art facility that will open around the turn of the year and hopefully prove to be the home of rowing, not just in Saudi but the entire region. For his part, Alireza is also running for a place on the World Athletes Rowing Commission, to give Asia a representative that can help it build on what is now – thanks in no small part to himself – a burgeoning sport in the region. That success is a strange notion he’s only just coming to terms with.

“It’s still a little weird seeing another Saudi in a rowing boat. For so long it was just me, with people saying things like, ‘hey, are you kayaking?’ But now people are out there and they’re speaking my language – and even starting to use rowing lingo, too. I’m not used to seeing people living this life at home, but my motivation, now, is purely for them.”