For Iraq, just getting to Beijing is enough

By John Chalmers

BEIJING (Reuters) - For Iraq's athletes the Beijing Olympics has been a rollercoaster of high hopes, heartache and relief, and that was before their events started.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) disqualified Iraq for "political interference" in its national committee just weeks before the opening of the Games, derailing the war-torn country's plan to send a team of seven.

Now, four of those athletes are in Beijing thanks to a last-minute decision by the IOC to lift its ban.

"We did it. Finally we did it," said a jubilant government spokesman Ali Aldabbagh, who had flown to the IOC's headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to negotiate the reversal of the ban.

"Although we faced problems with the IOC, problems in Iraq, problems of getting our athletes here because there is no proper flight and no proper visas, in the end we did it," he told reporters at a flag-raising ceremony on Saturday.

A double-sculls crew, a sprinter and a discus thrower are competing under that flag in Beijing. Three athletes had to stay at home because their spots were redistributed to other national teams when the ban came into effect.

Sport has given Iraqis arguably their greatest moment of unity since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, when an Iraqi soccer team, including members of all its main warring groups, defeated a heavily favored Saudi Arabia to win the Asian Cup last year.

But sport has suffered with the rise of sectarian violence in the country, and the reputations and international links of sporting stars have made them and their families targets of criminal gangs.

Sprinter Dana Abdul-Razzaq, the team's only woman, has faced many obstacles to reach Beijing, from a sniper's bullets to a paucity of adequate training facilities and religious and cultural opposition to female athletes.

The 22-year-old told Reuters in an interview at Baghdad's crumbling Shaab stadium in March that she had come under fire from gunmen twice in the Iraqi capital.

Having survived, she went on to set a new Iraqi record for the 200 meters, 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 will run in the 100 meters in Beijing.

"I was disappointed and angry with the IOC ban," she told reporters at Saturday's ceremony. "Now I'm just happy to be here, and the most important thing for us was the raising of our flag."

(editing by Keith Weir)

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