Winners of the nine weight categories at the first Saudi Games will earn SAR1 million (£236,000/$266,000/€273,000) each.

That is nearly $250,000 (£220,000/€256,000) more than Maude Charron's reward from the Canada Olympic Committee for winning gold in Tokyo last year and about seven times more than any American weightlifter would be paid by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee for becoming Olympic champion.

Saudi Games silver medallists take $80,000 (£71,000/€82,000) and the reward for bronze is $27,000 (£24,000/€28,000).

"This is a dream for the athletes," said Mohamed Alharbi, President of the Saudi Arabian Weightlifting Federation.

When the prize fund worth more than $50 million (£44 million/€51 million) was announced for the Saudi Games, which is based on the Olympic Games and will feature 45 sports, there was a huge response from the nation's growing number of weightlifters.

The total number of athletes taking part in all sports at the Games will be about 6,000 and the officials will number 2,000.

There was a rush by weightlifters to take part and Alharbi said, "We asked ourselves where they all came from and had to organise five qualifying competitions.

"It has encouraged all of them to train more, they will all learn from the experience."

The entries for qualifying events totalled about 800, roughly 10 times the number of weightlifters in the entire kingdom only six years ago when Alharbi took up his role and started to promote and develop the sport.

There will be 14 athletes in each of the weight classes, which are the same as those for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games except for the absence of the women’s super-heavyweights, for which there are too few registered lifters in Saudi Arabia.

The competition takes place in Riyadh over four days from October 27, and while all but a handful are Saudi Arabian there will be a few resident lifters - of which there are about 150 in the country, compared with more than 2,000 Saudis - from South Africa, Jordan, Yemen, Egypt and South Korea.

The youngest competitors will be 16, and at least one lifter of that age is reckoned to have a chance of winning a medal.

The nation's medallists at the Asian Championships, which ended in Bahrain on Sunday, will be strong favourites in their weight categories, as will all those who have competed at international level.

Mansour Al Saleem, who was the first Saudi Arabian to win a medal at the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) World Championships in 2019, was a bronze medallist at 55kg in Bahrain and will compete against his brother Seraj at 61kg in the Saudi Games.

Nawaf Almazyadi was also a bronze medallist at the Asian Championships at 73kg, the most popular weight category for entries at the Saudi Games.

There was a team of four women in Manama, another sign of the growth in Saudi weightlifting, which had never had a female competitor in international competition until 2019.

The Saudi Games will be "all over national television and very big on social media" said Alharbi, who will use the event to further promote weightlifting.

He has development project called "Weights across the Kingdom" which has already created a huge increase in weightlifting’s popularity.

Back in 2016 there were only four active clubs from eight registered, and about 75 athletes, all male, said Alharbi.

Now there are 49 clubs, five training and development centres, and about 700 female lifters in a total of 2,200.

"We started building training centres in 2017 when the Government pushed us to grow the sport and it has been non-stop growth since then," Alharbi said.

"We provide support for coaches, for athletes to enter competitions.

"If there is an area without clubs we target it.

"We operate in zones - if there are no athletes there, we invest."

Recruitment starts at school age and there are twice-yearly competitions for children aged nine to 15 purely for technique rather than weight lifted.

"The national youth team now is very strong," said Alharbi, who highlighted the achievement of Ali Majed Kalitit winning a snatch gold medal at the IWF Youth World Championships in Mexico this year and a silver on total.

The national team coaches are headed by Eduards Andruskevics, the renowned Latvian, who works with other coaches from Estonia, Armenia and Saudi Arabia - including the newly-appointed women’s coach Dai Al Naimi.

The main aim behind the Olympic-style mega event is to provide a platform for Saudi athletes to reach their best potential and to give further evidence that the country can successfully host large sports events.

The Saudis have spent fortunes on hosting sports events such as Formula 1, world heavyweight boxing, mixed martial arts and major football matches, and have bought Newcastle United, the English Premier League club.

Saudi Arabia is due to stage the Asian Games for the first time in 2034 in Riyadh, as well as the 2029 Asian Winter Games at Trojena, a ski resort not yet built.