Abubaker Kaki after his All Africa Games victory in Algiers (© AFP / Getty Images)
After winning three gold medalsa record for the country - at the All Africa Games in Algiers in July, crisis-torn Sudan begins the 11th IAAF World Championships in Athletics, Osaka, Japan (25 Aug - 2 Sep) with its sporting head held high. Sudan may be a troubled country, one accused of “serious human rights violations” by the United Nations, but its athletes are giving its people something to be proud of.
International experts say that more than 200,000 people have been killed, and 2.5 million driven from their homes, since rebels took up arms in 2003. Consequently, the UN has committed the world’s largest peacekeeping operation to Sudan. Yet, even while the conflict continues, a hand-picked group of elite athletes train in Khartoum for sporting stardom and in the name of unity.
“For us it is one Sudan – we are all appreciated,” says Nagmeldin Ali Abubakr, the 2003 World Youth 400m champion and 2004 World Junior runner-up. Abubakr, 21, is from Darfur and is one of a talented pack of rising young Sudanese. The pack also includes two newly-crowned All Africa Games champions – Abubaker Kaki (men’s 800m) and Muna Jabir (women’s 400m Hurdles).
Furthermore, Sudan also have within their ranks three World Youth champions from 2005. There are two males - Adam Mohamed Al-Noor (400m) and Abdekader Idris Abdelkarim (400m Hurdles) – and one female – Nawal El Jack (400m). Jack went on to win bronze at the 2006 World Junior Championships.
The triumphs of Kaki, 18, and Jabir, 20, in Algiers helped Sudan to beat their previous best All African Games gold medal count of two, set in 1978. The other gold in Algiers came from the veteran Yamile Aldama, formerly of Cuba but who has represented Sudan since 2004. Aldama, 35, a former World Championships medallist indoors and out, remains Sudan’s best hope in Osaka but not their only one.
It may have been more the excitement of the moment than a realistic goal for Jabir to have said after her victory in Algiers that she had set her sights on the podium in Osaka but it speaks much for the ambition of these young Sudanese. She set a personal best 54.93, saying: “Before I came here my best was 55.50, now it is 54. I want to go 53, I want to medal in Osaka.” But it will probably take a low 53sec to accomplish it.
Perhaps the most exciting talent is Kaki, who defeated Mbulaeni Mulaudzi, South Africa’s Olympic silver medallist and World Indoor champion from 2004, in Algiers. Mulaudzi, who possesses the fastest 800m of the year, admitted his surprise at losing to an opponent he had barely heard of. It was the speed of Kaki’s finish which had spectators gasping as he snatched a late win in 1:45.22.
Kaki is forming the winning habit, having won the 800m at the Arab Championships in Amman and at the East Africa Championships in Uganda, both prior to Algiers. Just like Hicham El Guerrouj, Morocco’s Olympic 1500 and 5000m champion, Kaki was a football goalkeeper before taking up athletics. He has been in the sport for only three years and barely two years training seriously.
In recent years the come-from-behind tactics of the Olympic champion, Russia’s Yuriy Borzakovskiy, has been a talking point for the event and Kaki says: “I have never raced against Borzakovskiy but I know the way he runs because I have seen him often on television. I am aware that his finish is his strong point but I feel confident and ready to challenge him. Because of his tactic of coming from the back I feel similar to him and that does inspire me.”
There are no clubs in Sudan so athletes are spotted through the regions. The regions select the best athletes for the national championships and those who shine go to Khartoum to train at the national centre, which athletics shares with football and volleyball. The schools do not have tracks so the coaches’ judge talent largely from watching them run in open spaces.
The state pays the athletes’ way at the national training centre. Most arrive as students but it is seen as difficult to study in parallel with training, especially when they are training abroad – Ifrane, in the Atlas Mountains, where El Guerrouj used to train, is popular with the national squad. Most Sudanese who reach the elite level interrupt their studies and resume at the end of their athletics career.
Speaking jointly, Kaki and Abubakr said: “The athletes’ results are all appreciated equally by the fans and spectators wherever they come from. The country’s problems are political and the top athletes don’t really have anything to do with it. When the athletes return from good results abroad they get a hero’s welcome at the airport – television, flowers and lots of fans.”
David Powell for the IAAF
