Iraqi sprinter Dana Abdul-Razzaq has dodged bullets to pursue her love of running, her determination to succeed pushing her to become Iraq's only female athlete at the Beijing Olympics.
Few athletes will have faced the obstacles 21-year-old Abdul-Razzaq has overcome to reach Beijing, from a sniper's bullets to a paucity of adequate training facilities and religious and cultural opposition to female athletes.
"I love running, I have the persistence to keep practising and I have ambition despite all the problems that I face," she said at Baghdad's crumbling Shaab stadium.
Last October, Abdul-Razzaq was training with coach Yousif Abdul-Rahman at central Baghdad's Jadriya oval track before the Arab Games when a sniper opened fire nearby.
"She was dodging the bullets like in action movies," Abdul-Rahman recalled.
"She ducked to miss a bullet which hit a tree."
Abdul-Razzaq's memories of the incident are slightly less heroic. "After it was over, I fainted," she said. "I was back practising half an hour later, but we used the other side of the playing field," she said.
Another time, gunmen opened fire as the pair drove home from training through Saidiya, one of southern Baghdad's most dangerous districts. "My coach told me to lie down and he drove at very high speed," Abdul-Razzaq said. "I was crying but I survived, thank God. I didn't tell my parents about it."
'Wild card' entries
Having survived the gunmen's bullets, Abdul-Razzaq went on to set a new Iraqi record for the 200 m, running a time of 24.80 seconds at the Arab Games in Cairo last November to lower the previous mark by almost 0.3 of a second. She came fourth in the race overall.
Her efforts have been rewarded with a ticket to Beijing, courtesy of one of five "wild card" entries given to Iraq by the International Olympic Committee, saving her the trouble of direct qualification.
She will compete in the 100 m and 200 m events, a dream come true after only taking up running six years ago when she was in secondary school. She has since won more than a dozen medals at Arab and west Asian competitions.
"I am very happy because I feel that the fruit of all my hard work is the Olympics," she said.
Last year, the Iraqi Olympic Committee said 104 athletes, coaches, administrators and referees had been killed since 2003. The number of missing Olympic officials stood at 22, including the then head of the Olympic Committee who was kidnapped with several others in July 2006. Their fate is still unknown.
Iraq's Olympics contingent has not yet been finalized but the field and track union are sending Abdul-Razzaq and another athlete after receiving two wild cards.
Abdul-Razzaq trains twice a day, six days a week, each session lasting three or four hours. The facilities are basic, to say the least.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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