Sports - Reuters
Olympics: Palestinian Woman Racing Against the Odds
Date: Sun, May 23, 2004
By Matt Spetalnick
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - When Sanaa Abu Bkheet first started running through the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) refugee camp where she lives, she had to dodge neighbors' stones and stares as she sprinted past.
Now that the Islamic faithful have come to accept the sight of this tall, slender Palestinian woman hitting the rutted streets in pursuit of an Olympic dream, her troubles are still far from over.
Israeli army raids and daily gunfire pose constant threats as the 19-year-old Abu Bkheet trains to compete in the 800-meter run at August's Athens Games as the Palestinians' first female Olympic athlete.
She has only one pair of running shoes, no proper track to run on and no sponsors.
Even her plans for pre-Olympic training in Egypt are in doubt as Israel has temporarily banned Palestinians aged 16 to 35 from leaving the fenced-in Gaza Strip amid the latest spiral of violence.
That has raised the possibility -- one that Abu Bkheet refuses to even contemplate -- that she might not be allowed out of the tiny coastal enclave in time for the Olympics.
"I will not accept that I have gone through all this work and hardship in vain," she said in her family's austere, breeze-block home in Deir al-Balah as bursts of rocket fire echoed from the direction of a nearby Jewish settlement.
Given her primitive training conditions, Abu Bkheet, one of only four members of the Palestinian team, holds few illusions about her medal chances. Her fastest time is two minutes 28 seconds -- more than 30 seconds behind the world record.
But she recognizes that running for Palestine -- a country whose name graces the back of her warm-up jacket but which does not officially exist -- is as much about politics as sport.
"We will show the world that Palestine and the Palestinians are present," she said.
ARMY CRACKDOWN
Palestinian athletes began competing internationally after the 1994-95 Oslo peace accords with Israel and fielded a one-man Olympic team in Atlanta in 1996.
But since the start of a Palestinian uprising in September 2000, most local sports programs have all but collapsed amid an Israeli military crackdown in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Army offensives, curfews and roadblocks -- measures that Israel describes as self-defense against suicide bombers but Palestinians call collective punishment -- have restricted freedom of movement and crippled the Palestinian economy.
The side-effects for athletes have been loss of funds from the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority (news - web sites), disruption of training routines and cancellation of many local tournaments and meetings.
As a woman athlete in one of the most densely populated and religiously conservative places on earth, Abu Bkheet's problems have been compounded.
When she started training seriously in 2000, running in shorts and a T-shirt, residents of the camp -- where most women cover themselves from head to toe in traditional robes -- were furious and demanded that she dress more modestly.
Youths pelted her with sticks and stones as she zipped past. "It's not easy being a woman athlete here," she said.
Now she runs through the dusty streets in a full-length warm-up suit, even in sweltering weather, and hears shouts of encouragement from neighbors proud of her race against the odds.
OLIVE OIL
The daughter of a disabled policeman struggling to support his family on a $220 monthly pension, Abu Bkheet -- one of six children -- must do without the modern facilities and diet regimens of competitors from wealthier countries.
Each morning she rises early and downs a few tablespoons of olive oil for cheap nutrition before setting out on the first of the day's two workouts with her younger sister and a cousin.
The closest thing she has to a track is a rock-strewn dirt road that forms a semi-circle around a vacant beachside lot.
The last time she ran on a real track, at the pan-Asian games in Iran in February, she took sixth place.
She hopes to do well enough in Athens to win a scholarship to a foreign university.
But while training for what she sees as the race of her life, it is often hard to block out the fighting that sometimes rages just a kilometer or two away.
"It puts me in a bad mood," she said, sitting in a living room lined with trophies and medals. "But I have to put it out of my mind so I can focus on getting ready for the Olympics."
(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi)
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