Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Chicago Tribune
April 27, 2008 Six athletes have wild card invitations to compete in Beijing. Now they must dodge snipers to get there.
By Liz Sly, Tribune correspondent
BAGHDAD — As the mercury topped 100 degrees and a fierce noonday sun beat down on Baghdad University's crumbling running track, sprinter Dana Abdul-Razzaq limbered up for an arduous training session in the heat.
The only woman among the six Iraqi athletes who will be competing in this summer's Olympic Games, Abdul-Razzaq, 22, has to seize every opportunity to train, for there is no knowing when an outbreak of fighting will interrupt her schedule, as it has on numerous occasions in recent weeks.
Last summer on the same track she had to run literally for her life when three sniper bullets zipped past her. She is convinced she was fired on deliberately, as part of the vicious targeting of the country's athletes over the past three years.
After racing for cover behind the nearest tree, she fainted from the shock. "My coach had to revive me with water," she recalled.
"And then she continued training," added the coach, Yusef Abdul-Rahman. "She is more than an athlete. She is a fighter. A brave soldier."
Although all those competing in the Beijing Games will have pushed limits of endurance beyond those of the average human being, few will have had to overcome as many challenges as the Iraqi athletes, for whom merely participating in sports can bring a death sentence.
Peace through sports
Back in 2004, a record 100-strong Iraqi delegation, including more than 40 athletes, was sent to the Athens Games with high hopes for a new era in the country's sporting history. Athletes say they were liberated twice, from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and also from the special tyranny reserved for athletes by Hussein's son Uday, who famously used his position as head of Iraq's Olympic Committee to torture athletes who performed badly.
"Through sports, we aim to seize peace," Ahmed al-Samarrai, the president of Iraq's Olympic Committee, told the Tribune in Athens on the eve of the 2004 Games. "We want to live like the rest of the world."
Those hopes have been bitterly dashed by a war that heralded new horrors for Iraq's sporting community. Al-Samarrai has been missing since July 2006, when he was kidnapped by a suspected death squad, along with four other top Olympic officials and their 29 bodyguards, from a daylight function in central Baghdad.
Altogether, Iraq's National Olympic Committee counts about 100 athletes, coaches, referees and sporting officials killed since the 2004 Games, said Tiras Odisho Anwaya, the committee's director general, who will head the delegation to Beijing.
Some, like Al-Samarrai, are suspected to have been victims of Shiite death squads who targeted many prominent Sunnis during the 2005-06 period. Others were killed as part of a campaign against athletes by Sunni extremists linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq, which condemns sports as un-Islamic.
Among the victims are a renowned member of Iraq's Olympic soccer team, a top wrestling coach, a cycling champion and an entire tae kwon do team, whose 15 members were abducted in May 2006 on the road leading to Jordan. The remains of 13 of them were found a year later in the western desert.
The most recent attack came late last month, when the Olympic Committee's deputy secretary general, Raed Jaber, was killed in a drive-by shooting along with a basketball referee at a cafe in downtown Baghdad.
Inevitably, the violence has taken its toll on the country's sporting prowess. Iraq will be sending a much smaller delegation to this year's Olympics—about 15 members—in part because the national soccer team, which lifted the country's spirits in 2004 by nearly winning a bronze medal, did not qualify.
The six athletes are a discus thrower, a judo player, an archer, two rowers and Abdul-Razzaq, who holds Iraq's 200-meter record and won a silver medal in last fall's Arab Games. All are attending courtesy of wild card invitations issued by the International Olympic Committee to countries whose athletes do not otherwise qualify.
And all have had to battle extraordinary odds just to stay in the game.
"Every Iraqi athlete is a champion just by showing up for training," Anwaya said.
For Abdul-Razzaq, that has meant dodging not only bullets but also the Sunni and Shiite extremists who control the neighborhoods around her home, hiding her sports gear and the blond streaks in her dark hair underneath a black abaya.
"If they knew I was an athlete, they might kill me," she said. "I never thought of giving up, but I've been through some dark days, some scary days, when I wondered if I would be able to go on."
New obstacles
The recent fighting between Shiite militias and U.S. and Iraqi forces in Sadr City has brought new obstacles. Shaab Stadium, where she is supposed to train, has been closed because the area around it has been hit repeatedly by mortar and rocket fire.
The only other track is at Baghdad University, but her sporting federation refuses to pay the $400 fee charged for using the facility, and she can't afford to pay it herself. Baghdad's few indoor facilities, where she could train in air-conditioned comfort, are exclusively for men. So the university allows her to use the track for free during the scorching midday hours, when no one else wants to train.
Its 20-year-old surface is rotted with age and rutted by the tracks of the U.S. Abrams tanks that used the field as a base in 2003. Her shins have become inflamed by the hard surface. She can't afford to buy spikes, and trains instead in a pair of secondhand New Balance shoes picked up for $40 on a trip to Jordan.
In the latest blow, Abdul-Razzaq has learned that the committee can't afford to send her beloved coach with her to Beijing. "He's been with me since the beginning. He knows everything about me. He made me," she said.
But Abdul-Rahman, the coach, has faith in her. "I've trained many athletes over the years, but never one like Dana," he said. "She's stubborn, she perseveres, and if she was in any other country in the world she would be a champion."
April 27, 2008 Six athletes have wild card invitations to compete in Beijing. Now they must dodge snipers to get there.
By Liz Sly, Tribune correspondent
BAGHDAD — As the mercury topped 100 degrees and a fierce noonday sun beat down on Baghdad University's crumbling running track, sprinter Dana Abdul-Razzaq limbered up for an arduous training session in the heat.
The only woman among the six Iraqi athletes who will be competing in this summer's Olympic Games, Abdul-Razzaq, 22, has to seize every opportunity to train, for there is no knowing when an outbreak of fighting will interrupt her schedule, as it has on numerous occasions in recent weeks.
Last summer on the same track she had to run literally for her life when three sniper bullets zipped past her. She is convinced she was fired on deliberately, as part of the vicious targeting of the country's athletes over the past three years.
After racing for cover behind the nearest tree, she fainted from the shock. "My coach had to revive me with water," she recalled.
"And then she continued training," added the coach, Yusef Abdul-Rahman. "She is more than an athlete. She is a fighter. A brave soldier."
Although all those competing in the Beijing Games will have pushed limits of endurance beyond those of the average human being, few will have had to overcome as many challenges as the Iraqi athletes, for whom merely participating in sports can bring a death sentence.
Peace through sports
Back in 2004, a record 100-strong Iraqi delegation, including more than 40 athletes, was sent to the Athens Games with high hopes for a new era in the country's sporting history. Athletes say they were liberated twice, from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and also from the special tyranny reserved for athletes by Hussein's son Uday, who famously used his position as head of Iraq's Olympic Committee to torture athletes who performed badly.
"Through sports, we aim to seize peace," Ahmed al-Samarrai, the president of Iraq's Olympic Committee, told the Tribune in Athens on the eve of the 2004 Games. "We want to live like the rest of the world."
Those hopes have been bitterly dashed by a war that heralded new horrors for Iraq's sporting community. Al-Samarrai has been missing since July 2006, when he was kidnapped by a suspected death squad, along with four other top Olympic officials and their 29 bodyguards, from a daylight function in central Baghdad.
Altogether, Iraq's National Olympic Committee counts about 100 athletes, coaches, referees and sporting officials killed since the 2004 Games, said Tiras Odisho Anwaya, the committee's director general, who will head the delegation to Beijing.
Some, like Al-Samarrai, are suspected to have been victims of Shiite death squads who targeted many prominent Sunnis during the 2005-06 period. Others were killed as part of a campaign against athletes by Sunni extremists linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq, which condemns sports as un-Islamic.
Among the victims are a renowned member of Iraq's Olympic soccer team, a top wrestling coach, a cycling champion and an entire tae kwon do team, whose 15 members were abducted in May 2006 on the road leading to Jordan. The remains of 13 of them were found a year later in the western desert.
The most recent attack came late last month, when the Olympic Committee's deputy secretary general, Raed Jaber, was killed in a drive-by shooting along with a basketball referee at a cafe in downtown Baghdad.
Inevitably, the violence has taken its toll on the country's sporting prowess. Iraq will be sending a much smaller delegation to this year's Olympics—about 15 members—in part because the national soccer team, which lifted the country's spirits in 2004 by nearly winning a bronze medal, did not qualify.
The six athletes are a discus thrower, a judo player, an archer, two rowers and Abdul-Razzaq, who holds Iraq's 200-meter record and won a silver medal in last fall's Arab Games. All are attending courtesy of wild card invitations issued by the International Olympic Committee to countries whose athletes do not otherwise qualify.
And all have had to battle extraordinary odds just to stay in the game.
"Every Iraqi athlete is a champion just by showing up for training," Anwaya said.
For Abdul-Razzaq, that has meant dodging not only bullets but also the Sunni and Shiite extremists who control the neighborhoods around her home, hiding her sports gear and the blond streaks in her dark hair underneath a black abaya.
"If they knew I was an athlete, they might kill me," she said. "I never thought of giving up, but I've been through some dark days, some scary days, when I wondered if I would be able to go on."
New obstacles
The recent fighting between Shiite militias and U.S. and Iraqi forces in Sadr City has brought new obstacles. Shaab Stadium, where she is supposed to train, has been closed because the area around it has been hit repeatedly by mortar and rocket fire.
The only other track is at Baghdad University, but her sporting federation refuses to pay the $400 fee charged for using the facility, and she can't afford to pay it herself. Baghdad's few indoor facilities, where she could train in air-conditioned comfort, are exclusively for men. So the university allows her to use the track for free during the scorching midday hours, when no one else wants to train.
Its 20-year-old surface is rotted with age and rutted by the tracks of the U.S. Abrams tanks that used the field as a base in 2003. Her shins have become inflamed by the hard surface. She can't afford to buy spikes, and trains instead in a pair of secondhand New Balance shoes picked up for $40 on a trip to Jordan.
In the latest blow, Abdul-Razzaq has learned that the committee can't afford to send her beloved coach with her to Beijing. "He's been with me since the beginning. He knows everything about me. He made me," she said.
But Abdul-Rahman, the coach, has faith in her. "I've trained many athletes over the years, but never one like Dana," he said. "She's stubborn, she perseveres, and if she was in any other country in the world she would be a champion."