Tue, Aug 05, 2008 page18

• Dodging bullets on the road to the Games

  • AFP
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  Iraqi female sprinter Dana Hussein needed more than just sporting determination to get to the Beijing Olympics: She had to survive bombings, sectarian fighting and even a sniper shooting.

  This week the 100m and 200m sprinter will become only the third Iraqi woman to attend the Games after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) lifted a ban, allowing her and four teammates to travel to the Chinese capital.
  
  

  “The Olympics are beautiful and this is the first time I can participate,” a nervous but happy Hussein said on the very Baghdad University field where a sniper opened fire at the 21-year-old, missing her head by centimeters.
  
  

  

  Iraqi sprinter Dana Hussein warms up before an afternoon training session in Baghdad on July 31.

  PHOTO: AFP

  “I was shot at here by a sniper, in this stadium, and I wasn’t killed because, thank God, I happened to be running,” she said at the pot-holed, ankle-twisting field where she has trained for the last four years.
  
  

  Yousif Abdel-Rahman, Hussein’s 46-year-old coach and a former national 400m champion, recalled how despite her escape, the violence that has plagued Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion was almost too much for him to bear.
  
  

  “There were several assassination attempts on our way home, car bombs and explosions,” said Abdel-Rahman, who each day accompanies Hussein to Baghdad’s middle-class al-Saydiyah neighborhood after training. “Many times when we were driving home we were followed by gunmen who started shooting at us. It was her insistence that pushed me to continue working with her. She is really a brave girl.”
  
  

  

  Iraqi sprinter Dana Hussein warms up before an afternoon training session in Baghdad on July 31.

  PHOTO: AFP

  Violence in Iraq has become part of people’s life, with tens of thousands killed in an insurgency and sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunni Muslims since the US-led troops toppled Saddam Hussein five years ago.
  
  

  It is a conflict that student Hussein, a Shiite, and trainer Abdel-Rahman, a Sunni, hope sport can transcend.
  
  

  “Participation in the Olympics means a lot to me, because I will represent an entire country, not just myself”, Hussein said.
  
  

  Although few Olympic athletes are likely to have faced the kind of obstacles that Hussein has had to overcome, it was politics rather than violence that nearly killed Hussein’s chance to compete in the Games.
  
  

  In June the IOC had suspended Iraq for “political interference” in its National Olympic Committee, which was sacked in May and replaced by a new panel headed by Iraqi Youth and Sports Minister Jassem Jaafar.
  
  

  The IOC said the committee had an insufficient quorum and had failed to hold elections in more than five years. The decision left Hussein and her teammates locked out of the competition.
  
  

  The head of the committee, Ahmed al-Samarrai, was kidnapped at gunpoint in Baghdad in July 2006 at the height of sectarian violence in Iraq along with several associates and he has not been heard of since.
  
  

  Pleading Iraqi officials struck an 11th-hour deal with the IOC, that allowed five of their athletes — two track and field participants, including Hussein, two rowers and an archer to go to Beijing.
  
  

  A weightlifter and judoka were not so lucky after missing a registration deadline.
  
  

  “When I heard about our elimination from the Olympics on the television, I cried for two-and-a-half hours,” Hussein said.
  
  

  “I was so depressed because I felt that everything I had worked for under such difficult conditions had vanished. But after we were allowed to participate in the Games, life came back to me. I was as happy as child and during a party at my home, my happiness was indescribable,” she said.
  
  

  Hussein first laced up her running shoes only five years ago and soon caught the attention of officials, winning half-a-dozen medals at Arab and Asian meetings.
  
  

  Her international fame became such that Time magazine included her in a list of 100 athletes to watch at the Beijing Olympic Games, although she was listed as No. 99.
  
  

  Iraq’s conflict has meant Hussein has had almost no cash to fund her athletics career, forcing her to forfeit a series of preparatory meetings ahead of Beijing.
  
  

  Medals are almost certainly out of reach for her, but she believes that she can beat her current national time in the 200m and also top Iraq’s 100m table, where she is currently in second place.
  
  

  “Dana is a self-made athlete,” Abdel-Rahman said. “She is a champion and that deserves everyone’s respect.”
  
  

  Sadly, despite years of dedicated work to prepare the sprinter for the Olympics, he can only watch his protege perform on television, after a last minute decision by the Iraqi sports ministry that barred him from going to Beijing.
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