Sporting Al Riyadi Beirut

The Sporting Al Riyadi Beirut or Riyadi Club and Sporting Club is a Basketball club in Lebanon.

It is based in Raouche, Beirut where men and women basketball competition are held every year. It has an amateur category where participants can register for classes and trainings for preparation to be a professional basketball athlete. It also holds other sports such as chess, martial arts, dancing and others.

History

It was founded on 1934 by Hussein Sejaan, Hassan Ladki, Fouad Zantout, Youssef Shaker, Mustafa Shaker, Zouheir Yatim, Helmi Chehab, and Wafic Nsouli. In the year of 1945, the Riyadi Club in Beirut was given the permission to participate in various sports in Raouche by the Ministry of Interior. Most of the sports were basketball, volleyball, handball, tennis and pingpong.

Al Riyadi transferred to Sanayeh from Raouche in 1947. The President Bechara El Khoury, Prime Minister Riad El-Solh and Saeb Salam attended the opening ceremony who are also present in the first basketball game against the Turkey Galatasary SK. The club returned in Raouche and played against Bain Millitaire last 1954.

On 1965, the first women basketball team were first formed and they compete against other clubs that also had women teams such as Homenetmen Beirut and the Antranik SC. A closed-court called Saeb Salam Arena was created during the term of Club President Hisham Jaroudi in 1991.

Al Riyadi has tons of achievements. They won the Lebanese Basketball Championships 19 times. There was a time where they were undefeated for two years. They won the West Asian Basketball Championship in 1998 in Jordan. The win results them to have an appearance at the Asian Basketball Championship that was held in Malaysia.

The club won bronze medal. The club was crowned as the champions in the 16th Dubai International Tournament which was held last January 2005. They were crowned the Champions of Lebanon for the 2004-2005 season. They broke a record by winning all of the 25 games of the season and be the first team to ever won the championship without any loss.

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