BAGHDAD, 7 August 2004 — Fear mingles with excitement for 29 Iraqi athletes competing in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, as they aspire to the pinnacle of sporting achievement despite miserable training conditions at home.
“I am very happy and at the same time I’m very frightened,” said Ala Hekmat, a 100- and 200-meter sprinter, amid the pomp and circumstance of a leaving ceremony organized ahead of the team’s departure for Europe.
“It’s the first time I’ll go abroad and I am the only woman in the team. It’s a big responsibility,” said the 19-year-old.
“I really hope to win something, I’m aware that I’m representing my country and that people are watching me. It’s not easy,” she admitted, as a uniformed orchestra played Viennese waltzes in a Baghdad gym, formerly named after deposed President Saddam Hussein.
“I have a double dream,” said Iraqi Olympic Committee President Ahmed El-Hajjiya Samarrai. “Firstly, to see our team, with the Iraqi flag, parade in peace with other countries” and secondly “to win a medal and we have big hopes in football and weightlifting”.
It was in these two sports that Iraq qualified for the world’s most-loved sports championships, which gets underway on Aug. 13.
Iraq has been invited to participate in five others competitions: swimming, athletics, taekwondo, boxing and judo.
“We call the football team the team of the future,” said left-winger Basim Abbas, 23, proudly.
“It makes me sad when I see all that is happening here, we love our country so much,” he said. “But I am optimistic, that one day there will be a new Iraq and that the people of the Olympic committee will improve sport in Iraq,” he said.
Since 1948, Iraq has won only one Olympic medal — when weightlifter Aziz Addel Wahed won a bronze in the 1960 Games in Rome.
Training is far from easy in a country ravaged by poverty, war and more than a decade of international sanctions. Despite appalling insecurity in Iraq, proud parents were content to bask in their admiration of their talented children.
