Iraqi teenage sprinter Alaa Jassim’s taste of Olympic competition lasted just less than 13 seconds in Athens on Friday but she said she would not have missed it for the world.
Jassim looked tense as she waited by her starting blocks for the first round of the women’s 100m alongside one of the gold-medal favourites, Christine Arron of France — but she had come a long way for this.
The 18-year-old lives in Baghdad with her mother and three siblngs and trains six days a week, although only in the evening and only when there is no bombing or shooting.
”I was a little bit afraid because Arron and the big girls were there,” she said through a translator. ”They were very fast — it didn’t last long.”
Arron and race winner Vida Anim of Ghana were turning towards the television interview crews by the time the bespectacled Iraqi crossed the line, last of the eight runners and 15m behind.
Her time of 12,70 seconds is nothing to be ashamed of — 11 women ran slower times in the eight races that separate the Olympic elite from the also-rans.
”It is a start for the Iraqi athletes. Perhaps if we had the same facilities as the others we could compete on an equal footing,” she said. ”We have so many difficulties to train.”
Jassim, who competed in the same tight-fitting outfit as the other runners, is determined that her competitive career has just begun.
”I will carry on competing. My aim is to prove that women are not inferior to men. I want to compete in the Pan-Arab championships in Algiers this year.”
Alaa has been making the most of her trip to Athens.
In the athletes’ village, she had made a point of approaching United States sprinter Lauryn Williams, who won one of the earlier heats on Friday.
After introductions, the two had swapped pin badges and wished each other luck without any hard feelings about the political situation between their two countries.
Another woman competing against the odds was Robina Muqim Yaar of Afghanistan, whose only concession to her background was the long lycra tights she wore to cover her legs.
Yaar was seventh in her heat in a time of 14,14 seconds, placing her comfortably ahead of Fartun Abukar Omar of Somalia.
It was four seconds faster than her fellow Afghan Lima Azimi ran at last year’s world championships in Paris.
But unlike the talkative Azimi, 19-year-old Yaar did not stop to talk to the media. — Sapa-AFP