Iraq happy to be in Doha Games
(AP)Updated: 2006-12-07 15:17 Iraqi athletes are hardly bothered by old equipment or few places to train. There are more pressing worries - the fear of being killed or kidnapped.
In the face of such danger, Iraq ended a two-decade absence from the Asian Games. It sent 81 athletes to Doha, men and women exhibiting a will to carry on amid the chaos.
 Iraq's Amer Ali, 10, looks at the scoreboard after the men's 200m individual medley swimming heats at the 15th Asian Games in Doha December 6, 2006. [Reuters] |
Amer Ali is at enough of a disadvantage, even without the constant peril. He is competing in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke and the 200-meter individual medley. And he is all of 10 years old, the youngest swimmer in the competition.
And he's considered lucky.
Amer's home and nearby club are in Baghdad's Palestine Street, where the violence is not as great as in other parts of the city.
"We try to do proper training despite all the hardship in Baghdad," said Mohammed Sarmad, who is Amer's coach.
Harem Ali, a Kurd from the northern city of Sulaimaniya, had to switch his training base from Baghdad to the south. He won a bronze medal in the 77-kilogram, or 170- pound, weightlifting competition on Monday, Iraq's first medal of any kind at the Games since it won five silver and two bronze in 1986 in Seoul.
The national air pistol shooting champion Dhiyya Hassan did not do well. He was 31st among 54, but was not surprised. "Before the war, I used to train at the club five times a week," the 44-year-old said. "Now I train at home where there is no real atmosphere."
Explosions, shootings and shelling are daily occurrences in Iraq.
"Any fair person who looks at Iraq knows that it is impossible for the athletes to train," the team spokesman, Imad Nasser, said. "There aren't enough clubs, and there can't be reconstruction when there is war."
The Iraqi delegation arrived in Doha only two days before the opening ceremony because of a three-day curfew in Baghdad, imposed after hundreds were killed last Thursday in a series of bombings.
Iraq's soccer team was turned away from the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, which started seven weeks after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. With Saddam deposed, Iraq has been welcomed back.
Iraq's delegation in Qatar has hopes for medals in weightlifting, rowing and boxing.
"Every Iraqi who came to Doha is a hero even without winning," said Tiras Anwaya, head of the delegation. "Had the security situation been better, Iraqi athletes would have trained better and used better equipment. Now the athletes are here and their minds are in Baghdad thinking about explosions and killings."
Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, has appealed for the release of Iraqi Olympic officials kidnapped in July. Iraq Olympic Committee chairman Ahmed al-Hijiya and 30 other people were taken hostage at gunpoint during a raid on a sports conference in Baghdad.
The fates of other coaches and officials is not encouraging. In the latest episode, the bullet-riddled body of the chairman of a leading soccer club was found over the weekend. He had been kidnapped last week.
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