The Libyan Olympic athlete Ihsan Shalabi announced that he had stopped his training regimen for the African Weightlifting Championship due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The athlete was preparing to take part in the tournament, which is set to take place in April 2020 in the Mauritius. The competition is a final qualifier for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which have now been deffered to 2021.
Shalabi has taken part in international competitons such as the African Games in Morocco in 2019, where he won two silver and a bronze medal, and the Islamic Solidarity Games in Uzbekistan in February 2019, where he won three bronze medals. He also claimed a further three bronze medals at the 29th African Weightlifing Championship in 2019 in Egypt.