Athletics

(image from The Irish Times)

I was born in Ireland, though my family moved to Canada when I was a toddler. Nevertheless, all of my extended family live there and I still maintain a proud connection to my homeland. So, it was a bit disheartening as well as confusing to read that the great Irish runner Sonia O’Sullivan finished dead last in the women’s 5,000 metres final last night. Just looking at the numbers, I couldn’t figure out what happened.

Then I read this beautiful tribute written by Keith Duggan of The Irish Times.

(By the way, Sonia still ran 16:20.9. My own personal best for 5,000 metres is 24:16. Just to put things into perspective.)

The story had been about which Ethiopian would win the men’s 10,000 metre race yesterday. It had even been suggested that Ethiopians would take all three medals. They weren’t counting on Zersenay Tadesse, who took bronze and became Eritrea’s first Olympic medallist (also setting a new National Record for the distance).

Tadesse said, “I’ve only been running for two years. Before that I was cycling. I trained at home but never expected to get on the podium. Realistically I should have finished between 4th and 6th place.”

For those who have never heard of Tadesse’s homeland, Eritrea borders Ethiopia and despite being a distinct society, succeeding Italian and British colonial administrations tended to lump Eritreans in with Ethiopians. In 1950, the UN granted control of Eritrea to Ethiopia, which completely annexed all Eritrean territory by 1962. After a liberation struggle that lasted thirty years, Eritrea finally gained its independence in 1993. Despite some ongoing border skirmishes with its neighbour (the loss of Eritrean territory left Ethiopia landlocked), this new country born from one of Africa’s oldest cultures seems well on its way to finding its voice on the world stage.

More on Eritrean history

“She is somewhere in her mid 50s, blind in one eye and has a throwing arm that was broken in 1990 and never set properly. On top of that, her best javelin throw is well short of the current records. Despite all that, she is training in the javelin throw five days a week and hopes to carry the Iraqi flag again in an international competition.”

Iraqi javelin specialist Hamdiya Ahmed al-Sammak wasn’t chosen to represent her country for the Athens Olympic Games. But it doesn’t seem to deter her. Denied the chance to compete for almost twenty-five years, she is making up for lost time.

Read the rest of the story at the excellent Women Warriors site.

Aguida Amaral kneels on the track as an official informs her she has one lap left to run
(Image from BBC)

In the women’s marathon race at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, a woman ran into the stadium more than 45 minutes after the winner had won her gold medal. Aguida Amaral of East Timor was one of four Timorese athletes allowed to participate in the games, even though East Timor hadn’t officially been granted its independence. Her completion of the marathon course was the culmination of a long journey, both for her and for her people.

The Indonesian government had been trying to suppress the movement for Timorese independence for more than twenty years, often brutally. David Wallechinsky tells the story in The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics: ” In 1999, Amaral and her three children were forcibly separated from her husband and sent to live in a refugee camp where they slept on the ground next to a dirt road. An Australian-led international force entered East Timor and stopped the Indonesian killing of the Timorese. Amaral and her children were reunited with her husband. However, her running shoes had been stolen, so she trained barefoot.”

As she entered the stadium, in 43rd place, she knelt down and kissed the track. Officials notified her she had another lap to complete, so she stood up, ran her lap, then repeated her ritual. She hadn’t just completed a race. She’d reached the end of an even longer journey.

Amaral, though proud, competed under the Olympic flag at the Sydney games. Four years later, she’s preparing to run the marathon again, this time under the flag of her own nation. Though you probably won’t catch her finish on the North American television coverage, somewhere in the Pacific, an entire nation (and a young one, at that) will be glued to their TVs and radios, straining to hear her name.

More on the runners of East Timor