Iraqi Athletes ‘Unlikely’ to Be at Olympics

[keysersoze]

Iraqi Athletes ‘Unlikely’ to Be at Olympics

By JULIET MACUR

The International Olympic Committee said Thursday that it was “very unlikely” that Iraqi athletes would compete at the Beijing Games because the Iraqi government refused to reinstate the country’s official Olympic committee in time to officially submit most of their names.

The deadline to submit the names of competitors in all sports except track and field was Wednesday, leaving five of seven Iraqi Olympic hopefuls with no shot at participating in the Games. For track and field, the last day to be listed is next Thursday, leaving a brief window for an Iraqi discus thrower and a sprinter.

“It’s a very tragic story,” Giselle Davies, a spokeswoman for the Olympic Committee, said in a phone interview from its base of Lausanne, Switzerland.

“Clearly, we’d very much like to have seen Iraqi athletes compete in Beijing,” she said. “But their government has let them down.”

The international committee suspended the Iraqi National Olympic Committee on June 4, after the Iraqi government disbanded the panel recognized by the I.O.C., saying it was corrupt and failed to hold proper elections. The government replaced that panel with its own, naming as chairman Iraq’s minister for youth and sports.

The international committee invited Iraqi officials to Lausanne to discuss possible remedies to what it called “political interference.” The Iraqis declined.

To help athletes from warn-torn Iraq in the last five years, the international committee and other groups have provided funds and training to support the Iraqi committee, including its more than 50 athletes and coaches, Ms. Davies said.

Among those were an archer, a judo athlete, two rowers and a weightlifter, whose Olympic hopes slipped away on Wednesday.

Ms. Davies said the international committee had sent an official letter to the Iraqi panel on Wednesday, saying that the deadline to enter most of the Iraqi athletes in the Olympic had passed. She said said the Iraqis could still “demonstrate to us in writing that the government intervention would be reversed.”

In the past, there have been examples when athletes desperate to compete in the Games have been given the chance to do so, even when their country lacked an Olympic committee.

Athletes from East Timor competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, wearing white uniforms and marching behind the Olympic flag, though their Olympic committee had not been formed yet. East Timor had voted for independence from Indonesia the year before and was recognized by the United Nation as an independent state.

At those same Olympics, though, the International Olympic Committee barred athletes from the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.

 

[keysersoze]

This is just an unfortunate sign of how ill prepared the Iraqi government is in fulfilling its most basic responsibilities.

I'm convinced that the Iraqi government will eventually collapse if it does not get its act together. People keep talking about the surge yet forget that basic functions of public administration do not exists in Iraq.

 

[charlie dark]

This is just an unfortunate sign of how ill prepared the Iraqi government is in fulfilling its most basic responsibilities.

I'm convinced that the Iraqi government will eventually collapse if it does not get its act together. People keep talking about the surge yet forget that basic functions of public administration do not exists in Iraq.

I'm no expert but I'm guessing setting up an Olympic committee and submitting applications for the Olympics may not have been on the Iraqi governments list of priorities... apparently they had a little civil unrest out there.......Come on man, have a little heart!!!!

 

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Iraqi sprinter Dana Hussein trains at Baghdad University.

Her running shoes are torn and frayed. To train, she has had to dodge sniper fire, sectarian killings and occasional car bombs. But Iraqi sprinter Dana Hussein is undaunted.

The 21-year-old is one of four Iraqis who have qualified for this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing. And she's the only Iraqi who is currently training for the Olympics inside the war-torn country.

At Baghdad University, clouds of dust blow over the weed-choked quarter-mile track where Hussein trains. She lays a bath towel in the dirt and stretches under a tree in the stifling noon heat.

Nearby, her coach, Yousif Abdul-Rahman, nervously twirls a stopwatch. He recalls a training session during the height of the sectarian bloodshed when he and Hussein had to drive across Sunni-Shiite battle lines to try to reach the track.

"I think we drove through eight firefights that day," the coach says. "I thought we were going to die."

One day, the violence even encroached on this rundown track in the relatively safe Jadriyah neighborhood. Abdul-Rahman says both he and Hussein had to hit the dirt when a sniper opened fire from a nearby rooftop.

"When she was training, the sniper shot the first round, and it crossed near Dana and hit the tree. She dove for cover," Abdul-Rahman says. "Then another round hit the field."

It might seem impossible, but Hussein says she tries to tune out Baghdad's turmoil and focus on running.

"I'm very ambitious, despite all the challenges I face in the streets," she says. "If the street is blocked or there's shooting, I'll take a different road, because I want to reach new goals and move forward."

Hussein pulls her black hair into a ponytail; thin gold bracelets dangle from her wrists. She says qualifying for the Olympics in the 100- and 200-meter dash is bittersweet.

"I want to train now and cry at the same time," Hussein says. "I'm happy because I qualified and will represent my country. But the problems. ... It's so hot here. And there is no training camp abroad for me. Sometimes I can't make it here to train because of the security situation."

Hussein comes from a sports-loving family: Her brother is a bodybuilder, and her father was a champion bicycle racer with the Iraqi national team.

In the searing 105-degree heat, Hussein steps onto the university's ragged track — parts of which have ankle-twisting cracks and crevices in the asphalt. She puts on her special track-and-field sprinter's sneakers — one running shoe is badly ripped along the seams — and begins to warm up.

A Troubled Olympic Committee

Iraq's Olympic committee was once run by Saddam Hussein's sadistic son Uday, who famously abused athletes who didn't perform well. The committee is no longer a bastion of brutality, but it is broke, sectarian and politicized, and its members are regular targets: The committee's deputy director was gunned down at a Baghdad bus station just a few weeks ago. The Olympic committee's director and some 30 employees who were kidnapped in the summer of 2006 are still missing.

The three other Iraqis who have qualified for the Beijing games — all men — are training overseas. The committee promised Hussein a training camp abroad, but so far, it hasn't materialized. Now, she says, it's probably too late.

"The Olympic committee cannot do anything to provide me a training camp," Hussein says. "They gave me one in Italy one time, but they made me go without my trainer and coach. I prefer to just train here with my coach than to go abroad without him."

In addition, the track clothes the committee gave Hussein didn't fit, so she had to sew the Iraqi flag onto running outfits that she bought with her own money.

"If I leave this sport, I think life will stop," she says. "Life must continue, even with the security situation so bad, because I have ambitions. I love this sport too much."

Last summer, the Iraqi soccer team's improbable win at the Asian Cup brought the shattered country together, at least for a fleeting instant. The Iraqi sprinter knows that she's a long shot to win a medal in Beijing, but she says confidently, "As long as I have ambition, maybe I can achieve something for my country."​

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90081909

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[keysersoze]

I'm no expert but I'm guessing setting up an Olympic committee and submitting applications for the Olympics may not have been on the Iraqi governments list of priorities... apparently they had a little civil unrest out there.......Come on man, have a little heart!!!!

Come on man, how hard is it really to set up a committee to fill out an application for the Olympics.

The Olympics are sign of participation in the global community. It just shows that Iraq is not even functioning on the most basic level of government.

 

[GET YOU HOT]

IOC provisionally suspends Iraqi Olympic committee
(AFP)

4 June 2008
ATHENS - The Iraqi Olympic Committee has been provisionally suspended over political interference by the Iraqi government, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced Wednesday.

"The executive board of the IOC decided today to provisionally suspend the Iraqi national Olympic committee as a consequence of the ongoing political interference by the government within the sports movement in Iraq," the IOC said in a statement.

The IOC had warned Iraq of sanctions after Baghdad on May 21 disbanded its national Olympic committee, replacing it with a new organisation supervised by the Iraqi sports ministry.

The IOC on Wednesday said it "does not recognise any "interim committee' nor any other officers appointed by the Iraqi government."

It added that talks would be held with the Iraqi committee members who were legitimately elected "to find appropriate solutions".

Iraqi athletes still have a chance to compete in the Beijing Summer Olympics which are only two months away, an IOC source said.

"The athletes will keep training, we hope to find a solution before Beijing," the source told AFP.

Iraq has said it disbanded its Olympic committee because it had an insufficient quorum and had failed to hold elections in over five years.

The head of Iraq's national Olympic committee, Ahmed Al-Samarrai, was kidnapped in July 2006 and has not been heard of since.

World football governing body FIFA also suspended the Iraqi football federation over the issue but rescinded its decision in late May.

 

[keysersoze]

GYH,

Off topic but - how come more ladies don't visit the politics board? Do you all just discuss things on SOL that are relevant instead?

 

[GET YOU HOT]

GYH,

Off topic but - how come more ladies don't visit the politics board? Do you all just discuss things on SOL that are relevant instead?

Many visit but don't comment.

All things are relevant. We all have our interests and career paths, topics of knowledge, passions. Mine just happens to be Politics, Music and Fitness and Beauty. A well rounded group, by my standards...

 

[charlie dark]

Come on man, how hard is it really to set up a committee to fill out an application for the Olympics.

The Olympics are sign of participation in the global community. It just shows that Iraq is not even functioning on the most basic level of government.

Exactly.....
But Iraq is barely a sovereign state, much less a functioning member of the 'global community'..What little security that exists in the country is due to foreign forces, the factional groups that exist within the country have yet to resolve their differences
But in answer to your question it is too hard for Iraq at this present moment in time to set up an Olympic Committee and submit an application, otherwise they would have done it....
If they can fumble can application form in quickly I'm sure it would be given some consideration....

 

[jucurious]

I'm no expert but I'm guessing setting up an Olympic committee and submitting applications for the Olympics may not have been on the Iraqi governments list of priorities... apparently they had a little civil unrest out there.......Come on man, have a little heart!!!!

Exactly.....
But Iraq is barely a sovereign state, much less a functioning member of the 'global community'..What little security that exists in the country is due to foreign forces, the factional groups that exist within the country have yet to resolve their differences
But in answer to your question it is too hard for Iraq at this present moment in time to set up an Olympic Committee and submit an application, otherwise they would have done it....
If they can fumble can application form in quickly I'm sure it would be given some consideration....

I agree