The tragic triumph of Samia Yusuf Omar

BY: SHIREEN AHMED

Samia Yusuf Omar was an aspiring middle distance runner from Somalia. Her untimely death at sea in April 2012 cut short her Olympic dreams  and the hopes of her beloved Somalia. Samia's is a story of resilience, strength and determination. One that deserves not to be forgotten.

Unlike other world class athletes, little information is available on one of Somalia's strongest female athletes. 

Born and raised in Mogadishu, Samia was the eldest of six children. Gifted in physical ability, she struggled with access to proper facility, training and coaching. She had to navigate through wars, poverty, instability and inconsistent safety. In 1991, the year she was born, the Somali government fell and Mogadishu Stadium, which once hosted International events and competition, became a military compound for insurgents after housing UN special forces.  She and a few other athletes had few options other than a dilapidated Coni Stadium built in 1958 and the open road.

Duran Farah, President of the Somalia's national Olympic Committee stated: “Sports are not a priority for Somalia. There is no money for facilities or training. The war, the security, the 
difficulties with food and everything – there are just many other internal difficulties to deal with.” 
With no adequate track to run on, Samia was forced to run in the streets. She faced many threats and much harassment from insurgents who believed that as a Muslim woman, she should not be participating in sports at all. 

Covering as she trained in public, Samia wore a hijab, sweat pants and long-sleeved shirts as not to draw ire from local soldiers. 
Samia also had few opportunities to compete at different meets in the region due to logistics and other variables such as transportation, accommodation and political instability. 

Without financial support from a National Organization, access to doctors, sports therapists or even a stipend for a proper diet, Samia continued to train without formal coaching and instruction in order to participate in the Beijing 2008 Olympics with Abdinasir Said Ibrahim a runner in the 500 m event. They were the only two athletes that were sent to represent Somalia.

Samia was a middle distance runner but she was encouraged to run the 200m in Beijing for "the experience". She came in last in the race, at least 8 seconds behind the last runner in the event. She did not advance beyond the preliminaries. The crowd roared with appreciation as she came down the track to finish her race with pride and dignity. 

Abdi Ibrahim also finished last in his heat and did not advance. Both athletes were outclassed by their competitors but their determination and drive shone through. 

In preparation for the London Games Samia decided to move from Somalia into neighbouring Ethiopia.
An Al-Jazeera profile of Samia in 2011 confirmed that she left Somalia to find better training possibilities in Addis Abeba- a place where the sport of running is quite revered and respected. She had an opportunity to work with Eshetu Tura a former Olympian from Ethiopia. 

Without having to contend with threats to her personal safety from Al-Shabab, Samia could focus on training for London 2012.

Samia's sister Hodan, spoke with the BBC's Newsday Programme from Finland. She said Samia left Ethiopia and first travelled to Sudan then up to Libya. 

"She arrived in Libya in September 2011; for several months we didn't hear from her when she was lost in the Libyan desert and detained there, " Hodan explained. "But she decided to go by boat, and we told her not to, and my mother tried to tell her not to. But Samia was very determined and asked for our mother's forgiveness, and my mother gave it, and she took the boat, and she died."

According to unconfirmed reports Samia perished in an incident when the Italian navy approached the boat after they ran out of petrol and they asked for help. The Italian ship threw some ropes over the side for them to catch and swim to the navy ship. Samia was one of seven people- six women and one man who died trying to get on to the Italian ship. 

It is still unclear whether Samia drowned or whether her body was recovered other than to say that she died in a "boating accident". Reports of her death were confirmed August 20, 2012 from Somalia's National Olympic Committee after she would have competed in the London 2012 Games. 

Unofficially, Hodan said she had heard of her sister's death from other passengers on the boat.

Qadijo Aden Dahir, Deputy Chairman of Somalia's National Olympic Committee, said: "It's a sad death...She was our favourite for the London Olympics."
ZamZam Mohamed ran in place of Samia. 
Samia faced obstacles at every juncture of her journey to compete at the highest level of athletics. 

She faced disadvantages and hurdles such as non-existent resources and trained in conditions unfathomable to other athletes from around the world.

Athletes who, generally have the cultural and financial support of their homelands. 

Samia was a courageous woman with a passion to run and an unmatched work-ethic considering her surroundings.

She overcame cultural barricades,  navigated through war-torn society, left her the comfort of her family and consistently aimed for higher goals. 

To any observer, she is everything that is fundamentally good about athletes that is often lost in the material world of consumerism and show. She is humility, determination, drive and confidence. 

Samia's story is about more than running or participating in the Olympics. It is an opportunity to highlight an aspect that should be recognized and respected in sport: the human spirit. 

Samia may not have received a medal or sponsorship deals from Somalia but she was dedicated to representing her country and risked her life to prove that she could.

That is a triumph that should shine above her tragedy.

"We know that we are different from the other athletes. But we don't want o show it. We try our best to look like the rest. We understand we are not anywhere near the level of the other competitors here. We understand that very, very well. But more than anything else, we would like to show the dignity of ourselves and out country."- Samia Yusuf Omar, 2008

With notes from: http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/track_field/news?slug=cr-somalirunners082408&print=1

FEMALE MUSLIM OLYMPIANS SCHEDULE

Muslim Women's Sport Foundation prepared the schedule below for your interest. For the better quality of the schedule, please refer to their website from: http://www.mwsf.org.uk/olympics_london2012.html

 

(Every effort has been made to ensure the information is correct. If errors are noticed please email info@mwsf.org.uk. For the full Olympic schedule  visit www.london2012.com)

SOMALIA: Burkas to tracksuits

Photo: Phil Moore/IRIN Going for gold: Female runners at Mogadishu's shelled-out Konis Stadium

MOGADISHU, 17 April 2012 (IRIN) - The Somali Athletics Federation will select one female runner from a field of 10 to compete in the 400-metres at this year's London Olympics. The youngest of those currently training in Mogadishu is Najma, 10. She started running six months ago, shortly after Al-Shabab left the city. “My father encouraged me,” said Najma.

She knows she is lucky - most girls in Somalia do not enjoy such freedom. The head coach of the Athletics Federation, Ahmed Ali Abikar, said it is very difficult for female athletes in Mogadishu to train. "Society doesn't understand about sport for girls. They cannot train everywhere, they are teased. But they know why they're doing it," he said.

Najma and Leila, 15, meet every Saturday to race around the 400m track at the bullet-ridden Konis Stadium in downtown Mogadishu, a city which until August 2011 was occupied by Al-Shabab insurgents. Leila, a slight and self-possessed young woman with a bright red scarf covering her hair and glittering gold earrings, remembers a time when she had to conceal her tracksuit beneath a burka until she was in a secure compound where it was safe to run. "The stadiums were closed because of the fighting", she said.

Leila has been training for three years and says she has always been interested in sport - something which both the mayor of Mogadishu and the prime minister of Somalia regularly express their desire to promote. She says girls in Mogadishu can now choose from basketball, handball and athletics. "When I'm running, I'm happy. It gives me real pleasure", she said.

Determined girls like Leila are staking their claim to freedom and choice. 

Nick Birnback, spokesperson for the UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS), agrees that change is in the air. Following the decision to grant women 30 percent representation in parliament, he said many had sought advice from UNPOS to understand their rights and request support. “They're willing to be really engaged in the political process knowing that the context of Mogadishu is a very hard environment,” he said.

At a February conference in Garowe, the administrative capital of Puntland, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) convened the second in a string of UNPOS-facilitated meetings to work towards the completion of, and transition to, a new constitution by 20 August 2012. Currently women have 12 percent representation in government, but it was agreed that in the new federal parliament of Somalia they will have at least 30 percent.

“Historic” Women’s Day celebrations

The head of the Somali Women's Federation, Asha Omar, is another determined character. She was responsible for organizing Women's Day celebrations in Mogadishu this year. Omar returned to Somalia two years ago after 21 years in Sweden. “We are the peace-lords, we're working hard,” she said. “It's the men who left their work - they're just fighting between themselves. Everyone wants to be a president. I tell them, be a president in your own home."

Omar says decades of male migration and drought have promoted women to non-traditional roles; many now are at the head of their families. "Women have no tribes, they have families", she explained, adding that Somali women lose their ties to the clan structure on marriage.

However, on women running for parliamentary office, Omar warned that because the clan structure has no tradition of female leadership, it will be a case of the men choosing for them, perpetuating inequality.

Photo: Phil Moore/IRIN

"We are the peace-lords, we're working hard

Abdi Hosh, TFG minister for constitution, described this year's Women's Day celebrations as historic. "It was the first such event I ever observed in Somalia; it was the first such event held at the venue in 21 years, as it was being used by IDPs [internally displaced persons], and it was significant for me because I fought for 30 percent membership for women in the next parliament," he said.

The city centre was awash with the vibrant colours of ceremonial outfits, hand-painted signs and flags, with many wearing matching turquoise and white dresses in the print of the Somali flag. "We are wearing the same dresses to show we are organized", said Hawa, a 22-year-old from Mogadishu, at the celebrations.

A long way to go

But a source at the Ministry for Information described the move towards 30 percent representation in parliament as a “gesture”. He called for action: economic empowerment such as loans for women, mandatory education for girls, a legal framework to promote equal rights and “a sensible reinterpretation” of social, traditional and religious norms. 

Many of the women entering politics in Mogadishu now are either from the diaspora, or have spent time in Nairobi - like Omar.

While some women are returning to Somalia, many are still moving away. Ahmed Ali Abikar, the athletics coach, has dealt with the disappointment of promising runners moving abroad to seek better opportunities. 

Samia Yusuf Omar, the girl he trained to run for Somalia at the Beijing Olympics, now lives in Ethiopia having made contacts abroad through her training with the Somali team. Mo Farah, one of Britain’s top Olympic hopes whose family fled Mogadishu shortly before the fall of the Said Barre's regime, is perhaps the most high profile example of this.

Osman, a 66-year-old security guard at Konis Stadium, says he has not missed one day of work in the last 21 years, and has bandages covering the bullet wounds on his left arm and right ankle to show for it. He will be watching Somalia's Olympic runners on TV and firmly believes sport for females will continue to win acceptance. "They can't help but play," he said, of the young girls and boys who use the track. "It's good for everyone." 

Somalia has been caught up in a devastating 20-year civil war. Al Shabab militants have threatened to carry on their war against the government and the African Union despite having been evicted from much of Mogadishu and losing territory to Kenyan and Ethiopian troops in the south: Two top Somali sports officials were among at least six killed by a suicide bomber in a Mogadishu theatre in early April.

Source: http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95308/SOMALIA-Burkas-to-tracksuitslia

Somali women defy danger to write basketball history

By Teo Kermeliotis, for CNN
(CNN) -- It's just a few minutes after the final whistle has blown and the shiny basketball court of the Al Gharafa Sports Hall in Doha is filled with shouts and cheers.
The sky blue-clad national women's basketball team from war-ravaged Somalia has just beaten Qatar, the host nation, at the 2011 Arab Games, in a hotly-contested match that ended 67-57 to the East African country.
"Words can't describe how I felt," says Canadian-born Somali team member Khatra Mahdi about last week's triumph. "We were all jumping up and down, there were tears in the girls' eyes -- history was made right there," she adds.
The victory marked a remarkable feat for the Somali players as it came against a backdrop fraught with difficulties and danger.
Notwithstanding Somalia's prolonged civil war and shattered sports infrastructure, the team says it had to prepare for the Games in the bullet-ridden police headquarters in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. There, the women would train for two to three hours a day under the watchful eye of security officers, tasked to safeguard them against religious militants targeting women playing the sport.
Fertile territory for Al Shabaab in chaos of Somalia
The threat is always there -- there are people who will see girls playing sport as a devil's thing and they will not allow it.
Duran Ahmed Farah, Somali National Olympic Committee
"We try to protect them outside and inside," says Said Duale, the secretary general of the Somali Basketball Federation, adding that the safety of the women is "taken very seriously."
In recent years, many Somali athletes have been threatened by members of the militant Islamist group Al Shabaab who see sport as an "un-Islamic" activity, according to Duran Ahmed Farah, the Somali National Olympic Committee (NOC) senior vice president for international relations.
In summer 2006, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which then controlled Mogadishu, labelled sport as a "satanic act" and issued an order prohibiting women from playing sport, including basketball.
A few months later, the ICU was deposed but Al Shabaab, which has connections to al Qaeda, is still fighting to impose its own interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, on the country.
"The threat is always there -- there are people who will see girls playing sport as a devil's thing and they will not allow it," Farah says.
Women have been stoned to death for adultery; amputations and beheadings are common while in some areas Al Shabaab has banned listening to the radio.
Inside Kenya's war with Al Shabaab
"These girls are brave: in that kind of environment they're still playing their sport, the sport they like," says Farah.
Basketball is one of the most popular sports amongst women in Somalia. Duale says that the country's first national female basketball team was created in the early 1970s but hadn't performed at an international tournament since 1987.
The Islamist ban, coupled with the challenges presented by the lack of sponsorship and destroyed facilities, have all hindered the development of the sport in recent years.
Yet, despite the threats and all the setbacks, Somalia's national women's basketball team concluded its participation at the Games on Monday with the very respectable tally of three losses and two victories -- Kuwait also lost to Somalia.
We want to use sport as a peace-building tool to bring the Somali people together.
Aden Hagi Yeberow, NOC president
Like some other teams representing Muslim countries, the national team plays in relatively modest uniforms: track pants and shirts with elbow-length sleeves; players also wear scarves that cover their hair.
Coach Mohamed Sheekh put together an ambitious team comprised of women based in Somalia and the diaspora -- the United States, Canada, UK and Germany. Many of the players hadn't even seen their teammates before, let alone played a basketball game with them.
"I'm very happy and proud of them," says Sheekh of his players. "They were excellent and everyone was talking about them."
NOC president Aden Hagi Yeberow says the team's success in Doha can act as a unifying factor in a country that's been plagued by insecurity, political instability, lack of unity and scarcity of resources.
"We want to use sport as a peace-building tool to bring the Somali people together," he says. "What these young girls are doing in this tournament has laid the foundations, hopefully, of a good future of our people.
"We would like to capitalize on this and also to move forward and, hopefully, this will be the beginning and the start of the unity of our people."
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/22/sport/basketball-somalia-women-al-shabaab/

Death Threats Fail to Stop Women’s Basketball

By Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar

MOGADISHU, Oct 18, 2011 (IPS) - When Al-Shabaab militants called the Somali national women’s basketball team captain, Suweys Ali Jama, and told her she had two options: to be killed or to stop playing basketball, she decided that neither was really an option at all.

"I will only die when my life runs out – no one can kill me but Allah … I will never stop my profession while I am still alive," Jama told IPS.

"Now, I am a player, but even if I retire I hope to be a coach - I will stop basketball only when I perish," Jama said.

The Al-Qaeda-linked military group controls large parts of Somalia and occupied almost half of the country’s capital, Mogadishu, until its surprise withdrawal on Aug. 6. However, the group’s presence in the city remains as Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for an attack on the capital on Oct. 4, which killed at least 70 people.

Now Jama and members of her team have received death threats from the Islamic militant group, which views women’s participation in sport as "un-Islamic".

In August 2006 the Somali Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a group of Sharia courts, issued an order banning Somali women from playing sport calling it the "heritage of old Christian cultures." At the time the ICU controlled Mogadishu, but lost control of the city in December 2006.

Al-Shabaab, which was the armed wing of the ICU, has not altered their stance on women playing sport.

Aisha Mohamed, the deputy captain of the national women’s basketball team, said the militants also threatened her.

"‘You are twice guilty. First, you are a woman and you are playing sports, which the Islamic rule has banned. Second, you are representing the military club who are puppets for the infidels. So we are targeting you wherever you are,’ Islamists warned me during phone calls. But I am still clinging to my profession," Mohamed told IPS.

Mohamed is one of the prominent national team members who belong to the Somali military sports club, Horseed. Mohamed’s mother is a former member of the women’s national team and she has been playing the sport since she was a child.

Basketball is the second-most popular sport in Somalia after football and, aside from handball, is the only other sport that Somali women play. However, women earn meager salaries as professional basketball players.

"I am a human being and I fear, but I know that only Allah can kill me," 21-year-old Mohamed said echoing Jama’s sentiments.

So the team is training for December’s Arab Games in Qatar inside the safety of the bullet-ridden walls of the Somali police academy’s basketball court.

On a day with a clear blue sky overhead the women, dressed in loose fitting tracksuits and T-shirts and wearing headscarves, sprint from one end of the court to another amid the presence of hundreds of policemen.

When they are done they line up to take shots at the basketball hoop. All week they train for two hours a day here and only take off on Thursdays and Fridays – the Muslim weekend.

In the evening when the women leave the safety of the training base they swap their training gear for the anonymity of the traditional Islamic dress and veil. They also wear a Yashmak, a small piece of cloth to cover their faces.

Somalia’s first women’s national basketball team was formed in 1970 and participated in African and regional competitions over the years despite never winning a tournament, according to the National Olympic Committee President Aden Hajji Yeberow.

But the 2006 ban on women playing sports halted the growth of women’s basketball in this East African nation said Somali Basketball Federation Deputy Secretary-General Abdi Abdulle Ahmed.

"The Islamist ban led to some women (quitting the sport), because of fear," Ahmed told IPS.

President of the Somali Basketball Federation Hussein Ibrahim Ali said that whenever women’s involvement in basketball grows, something occurs to set the sport back.

The 2006 Islamist ban, which lead to nearly two hundred women quitting the sport because of fear of reprisals, was one such incident. The two decades of civil war in the country, was another. Since mid- July a severe drought has affected the country, with famine declared in regions of southern Somalia.

Ali added that lack of sponsorship and insecurity were the biggest killers of sport in Somalia.

"So when the world knows that Somalia has undergone such hardships and our women are playing in an international tournament, this would really be great publicity for the whole country and, in particular, for the basketball federation," Ali said.

The women’s coach Ali Sheik Muktar said that he is hopeful that his team will be successful in the upcoming Arab Games.

"To have a women’s team means a lot to Somalia," Ali said.
Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105501

Samia Yusuf Omar: Somalia’s runners provide inspiration

By Charles Robinson

Samia Yusuf Omar headed back to Somalia Sunday, returning to the small two-room house in Mogadishu shared by seven family members. Her mother lives there, selling fruits and vegetables. Her father is buried there, the victim of a wayward artillery shell that hit their home and also killed Samia’s aunt and uncle.

This is the Olympic story we never heard.

It’s about a girl whose Beijing moment lasted a mere 32 seconds – the slowest 200-meter dash time out of the 46 women who competed in the event. Thirty-two seconds that almost nobody saw but that she carries home with her, swelled with joy and wonderment. Back to a decades-long civil war that has flattened much of her city. Back to an Olympic program with few Olympians and no facilities. Back to meals of flat bread, wheat porridge and tap water.

“I have my pride,” she said through a translator before leaving China. “This is the highest thing any athlete can hope for. It has been a very happy experience for me. I am proud to bring the Somali flag to fly with all of these countries, and to stand with the best athletes in the world.”

There are many life stories that collide in each Olympics – many intriguing tales of glory and tragedy. Beijing delivered the electricity ofUsain Bolt and the determination of Michael Phelps. It left hearts heavy with the disappointment of Liu Xiang and the heartache of Hugh McCutcheon.

But it also gave us Samia Yusuf Omar – one small girl from one chaotic country – and a story that might have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t been for a roaring half-empty stadium.

***

It was Aug. 19, and the tiny girl had crossed over seven lanes to find her starting block in her 200-meter heat. She walked past Jamaica’sVeronica Campbell-Brown – the eventual gold medalist in the event. Samia had read about Campbell-Brown in track and field magazines and once watched her in wonderment on television. As a cameraman panned down the starting blocks, it settled on lane No. 2, on a 17-year old girl with the frame of a Kenyan distance runner. Samia’s biography in the Olympic media system contained almost no information, other than her 5-foot-4, 119-pound frame. There was no mention of her personal best times and nothing on previous track meets. Somalia, it was later explained, has a hard time organizing the records of its athletes.

She looked so odd and out of place among her competitors, with her white headband and a baggy, untucked T-shirt. The legs on her wiry frame were thin and spindly, and her arms poked out of her sleeves like the twigs of a sapling. She tugged at the bottom of her shirt and shot an occasional nervous glance at the other runners in her heat. Each had muscles bulging from beneath their skin-tight track suits. Many outweighed Samia by nearly 40 pounds.

After introductions, she knelt into her starting block.

***

The country of Somalia sent two athletes to the Beijing Games – Samia and distance runner Abdi Said Ibrahim, who competed in the men’s 5,000-meter event. Like Samia, Abdi finished last in his event, overmatched by competitors who were groomed for their Olympic moment. Somalia has only loose-knit programs supporting its Olympians, few coaches, and few facilities. With a civil war tearing the city apart since the Somali government’s collapse in 1991, Mogadishu Stadium has become one of the bloodiest pieces of real estate in the city – housing U.N. forces in the early 1990s and now a military compound for insurgents.

That has left the country’s track athletes to train in Coni Stadium, an artillery-pocked structure built in 1958 which has no track, endless divots, and has been overtaken by weeds and plants.

“Sports are not a priority for Somalia,” said Duran Farah, vice president of the Somali Olympic Committee. “There is no money for facilities or training. The war, the security, the difficulties with food and everything – there are just many other internal difficulties to deal with.”

That leaves athletes such as Samia and 18-year old Abdi without the normal comforts and structure enjoyed by almost every other athlete in the Olympic Games. They don’t receive consistent coaching, don’t compete in meets on a regular basis and struggle to find safety in something as simple as going out for a daily run.

When Samia cannot make it to the stadium, she runs in the streets, where she runs into roadblocks of burning tires and refuse set out by insurgents. She is often bullied and threatened by militia or locals who believe that Muslim women should not take part in sports. In hopes of lessening the abuse, she runs in the oppressive heat wearing long sleeves, sweat pants and a head scarf. Even then, she is told her place should be in the home – not participating in sports.

“For some men, nothing is good enough,” Farah said.

Even Abdi faces constant difficulties, passing through military checkpoints where he is shaken down for money. And when he has competed in sanctioned track events, gun-toting insurgents have threatened his life for what they viewed as compliance with the interim government.

“Once, the insurgents were very unhappy,” he said. “When we went back home, my friends and I were rounded up and we were told if we did it again, we would get killed. Some of my friends stopped being in sports. I had many phone calls threatening me, that if I didn’t stop running, I would get killed. Lately, I do not have these problems. I think probably they realized we just wanted to be athletes and were not involved with the government.”

But the interim government has not been able to offer support, instead spending its cash and energy arming Ethiopian allies for the fight against insurgents. Other than organizing a meet to compete for Olympic selection – in which the Somali Olympic federation chose whom it believed to be its two best performers – there has been little lavished on athletes. While other countries pour millions into the training and perfecting of their Olympic stars, Somalia offers little guidance and no doctors, not even a stipend for food.

“The food is not something that is measured and given to us every day,” Samia said. “We eat whatever we can get.”

On the best days, that means getting protein from a small portion of fish, camel or goat meat, and carbohydrates from bananas or citrus fruits growing in local trees. On the worst days – and there are long stretches of those – it means surviving on water and Angera, a flat bread made from a mixture of wheat and barley.

“There is no grocery store,” Abdi said. “We can’t go shopping for whatever we want.”

He laughs at this thought, with a smile that is missing a front tooth.

***

When the gun went off in Samia’s 200-meter heat, seven women blasted from their starting blocks, registering as little as 16 one-hundredths of a second of reaction time. Samia’s start was slow enough that the computer didn’t read it, leaving her reaction time blank on the heat’s statistical printout.

Within seconds, seven competitors were thundering around the curve in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest, struggling to separate themselves from one another. Samia was just entering the curve when her opponents were nearing the finish line. A local television feed had lost her entirely by the time Veronica Campbell-Brown crossed the finish line in a trotting 23.04 seconds.

As the athletes came to a halt and knelt, stretching and sucking deep breaths, a camera moved to ground level. In the background of the picture, a white dot wearing a headband could be seen coming down the stretch.

***

Until this month, Samia had been to two countries outside of her own – Djibouti and Ethiopia. Asked how she will describe Beijing, her eyes get big and she snickers from under a blue and white Olympic baseball cap.

“The stadiums, I never thought something like this existed in the world,” she said. “The buildings in the city, it was all very surprising. It will probably take days to finish all the stories we have to tell.”

Asked about Beijing’s otherworldly Water Cube, she lets out a sigh: “Ahhhhhhh.”

Before she can answer, Abdi cuts her off.

“I didn’t know what it was when I saw it,” he said. “Is it plastic? Is it magic?”

Few buildings are beyond two or three stories tall in Mogadishu, and those still standing are mostly in tatters. Only pictures will be able to describe some of Beijing’s structures, from the ancient architecture of the Forbidden City to the modernity of the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest.

“The Olympic fire in the stadium, everywhere I am, it is always up there,” Samia said. “It’s like the moon. I look up wherever I go, it is there.”

These are the stories they will relish when they return to Somalia, which they believe has, for one brief moment, united the country’s warring tribes. Farah said he had received calls from countrymen all over the world, asking how their two athletes were doing and what they had experienced in China. On the morning of Samia’s race, it was just after 5 a.m., and locals from her neighborhood were scrambling to find a television with a broadcast.

“People stayed awake to see it,” Farah said. “The good thing, sports is the one thing which unites all of Somalia.”

That is one of the common threads they share with every athlete at the Games. Just being an Olympian and carrying the country’s flag brings an immense sense of pride to families and neighborhoods which typically know only despair.

A pride that Samia will share with her mother, three brothers and three sisters. A pride that Abdi will carry home to his father, two brothers and two sisters. Like Samia’s father two years ago, Abdi’s mother was killed in the civil war, by a mortar shell that hit the family’s home in 1993.

“We are very proud,” Samia said. “Because of us, the Somali flag is raised among all the other nations’ flags. You can’t imagine how proud we were when we were marching in the Opening Ceremonies with the flag.

“Despite the difficulties and everything we’ve had with our country, we feel great pride in our accomplishment.”

***

As Samia came down the stretch in her 200-meter heat, she realized that the Somalian Olympic federation had chosen to place her in the wrong event. The 200 wasn’t nearly the best event for a middle distance runner. But the federation believed the dash would serve as a “good experience” for her. Now she was coming down the stretch alone, pumping her arms and tilting her head to the side with a look of despair.

Suddenly, the half-empty stadium realized there was still a runner on the track, still pushing to get across the finish line almost eight seconds behind the seven women who had already completed the race. In the last 50 meters, much of the stadium rose to its feet, flooding the track below with cheers of encouragement. A few competitors who had left Samia behind turned and watched it unfold.

As Samia crossed the line in 32.16 seconds, the crowd roared in applause. Bahamian runnerSheniqua Ferguson, the next smallest woman on the track at 5-foot-7 and 130 pounds, looked at the girl crossing the finish and thought to herself, “Wow, she’s tiny.”

“She must love running,” Ferguson said later.

***

Several days later, Samia waved off her Olympic moment as being inspirational. While she was still filled with joy over her chance to compete, and though she knew she had done all she could, part of her seemed embarrassed that the crowd had risen to its feet to help push her across the finish line.

“I was happy the people were cheering and encouraging me,” she said. “But I would have liked to be cheered because I won, not because I needed encouragement. It is something I will work on. I will try my best not to be the last person next time. It was very nice for people to give me that encouragement, but I would prefer the winning cheer.

She shrugged and smiled.

“I knew it was an uphill task.”

And there it was. While the Olympics are often promoted for the fastest and strongest and most agile champions, there is something to be said for the ones who finish out of the limelight. The ones who finish last and leave with their pride.

At their best, the Olympics still signify competition and purity, a love for sport. What represents that better than two athletes who carry their country’s flag into the Games despite their country’s inability to carry them before that moment? What better way to find the best of the Olympic spirit than by looking at those who endure so much that would break it?

“We know that we are different from the other athletes,” Samia said. “But we don’t want to show it. We try our best to look like all the rest. We understand we are not anywhere near the level of the other competitors here. We understand that very, very well. But more than anything else, we would like to show the dignity of ourselves and our country.”

She smiles when she says this, sitting a stone’s throw from a Somalian flag that she and her countryman Abdi brought to these Games. They came and went from Beijing largely unnoticed, but may have been the most dignified example these Olympics could offer.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/track_field/news?slug=cr-somalirunners082408