At the age of 18, Omar Jouma Bilal Al-Salfa was the only athlete representing the United Arab Emirates in athletics competition. Beijing was his only appearance in the Olympic Games. Al-Salfa qualified for the men's 200 metres by using a wildcard as the best non qualifying athlete for his country, because his personal best time of 20.94 seconds was 0.19 seconds slower than the "B" qualifying standard for the discipline. He spent six weeks preparing for the Games at a training camp in Poland with the team's national coach Vasko Anguelov Dimov. Al-Salfa's objective was to improve his personal best and to reach the second round, saying, "I must do something good at this Olympics. If I don't, I will not be happy." On 18 August, he was placed in heat seven of the men's 200 metres. Al-Salfa finished seventh and last out of all the finishing sprinters with a time of 21 seconds. Only the top three from a heat and the eight next fastest overall from all ten heats were allowed to advance to the second round, and Al-Salfa was eliminated since he was 40th overall.