00:00

Bars and tone

Black

Slate

Countdown

01:00

Haider Nowzad and Hamza Hussein row on river Tigris in Baghdad

Dana Hussein Abdel-Razzak sprints round track in Arbil

Ali Fakher slams opponent down in practice judo bout

Iraqi athletes are training against the odds for the Beijing Olympics.

Haider Nowzad competed in Athens in 2004 and is back with his partner Hamza Hussein.

Dana Abdul Razak has a place for the 100 and 200 metres sprint.

Ali Fakher missed the Asian Judo Championships in Kuwait in 2007 because he couldn’t get a visa so is raring to go to Beijing.

01:29

Baghdad GVs walls and checkpoints

Baghdad is still dangerous, divided by concrete blast walls and checkpoints into sectarian enclaves.

Sports facilities are inadequate, and a power struggle over who runs sport in Iraq means the country may not even be allowed to compete in Beijing.

01:45

Haider Nowzad and Hamza Hussein take their boat down to the river

But at least nobody’s yet blown up the river Tigris.

Haider and Hamza

are able to row right through the centre of Baghdad.

01:54

Tape 1033-2

06:24:17

Hamza Hussein:

“Once we're at the training centre, we're safe. We don’t have any problems because there is no one else on the water. There are just a few fishermen and people crossing from one side to the other.

Mostly we have the river to ourselves, at least between certain points. For example this is the Ministry of Defence. We can’t go any closer than 100 meters. They would fire at us.”

02:31

At least seven Iraqi athletes are listed to go to Beijing.

Most have been given wild card entries, invited regardless of their performance in the run-up to Beijing. The International Olympics Committee wants to make sure as many countries as possible have a chance to compete.

02:46

Haider and Hamza stop in middle of river

Haider Nowzad

We’d be in danger beyond this point. Over there is the Olympic Committee headquarters. Beyond that there are Americans and Iraqi Army. They won’t let us go past.

03:03

GVs Arbil

New mall and bouncy slide

Dana in kitchen getting breakfast

Dana sitting at table

Dana is training in Arbil in the Kurdish north of Iraq. It’s run by an semi-independent Kurdish government and there’s none of the violence that’s wrecked the rest of Iraq.

It could be another planet. In Baghdad, she and her coach came under sniper fire on the way to the track in the suburb of Jadriyya.

But Dana is still a woman in a man’s world.

03:27

Dana inv tu at table

Dana Hussein:

Yesterday, I worked on my stomach and back here in the room. I wanted to go to the gym next to the stadium but I couldn’t because it was full of men - it’s hard for a woman. It was very crowded, so I did exercises here in the room.

03:43

Lina helps Dana with exercises

So Dana works out with her friend Lina, who’s another sprinter. Lina is 17 and doesn’t have much time for gender stereotypes.

03:52

Lina Haasim:

“I see her as a man in her strength and courage and determination. She used to train in Jadriyya in Baghdad when her house was in a dangerous area. They should put up a statue to her!”

04:13

Dana on track

Dana and Coach Yousef Abdul-Rahman

Dana can’t train here more than a couple of hours a day because the stadium Is needed for football. And in any case, her coach says running round an empty track is no way to train for an Olympics.

04:25

Yousef Abdul-Rahman

“The training camp is not enough. True, there’s a stadium and a gym, and it’s safe and so on, but it’s not enough. Everyone else is out there competing, training against each other. We haven’t done any of that.

She’s training without any competition. In the next month or so she should take part in six or seven competitions if she’s to get to the right level. I know there are security issues but it’s not a 100% preparation.

04:58

Dana coming off track and sitting down

05:01

Dana Hussein:

I have an inflammation here. I’ve had it for a couple of months but nobody’s done anything. I’d pay for it myself but I don’t have time. They ought to bring a medical team here to the stadium.

But I’m putting up with it and keeping on training. My times are getting better even though I’m tired. It’s better than doing nothing.

05:26

Ali is training in Baghdad. The suburb where he lives was on the frontline of Iraq’s sectarian civil war in 2006 and 2007.

It’s much quieter now but sudden curfews still make it hard to move around.

05:44

Ali Fakher:

Ali: “If the roads are closed for a day or two, I still train but not like this. There’s no gym where I live, so I run, I lift weights, I play football.” (in area)

06:00

But like Dana, if Ali is to have much chance in Beijing he should now be training outside Iraq.

06:08

Abbas Amer:

There is no support, either from the Olympic Committee or the Judo Association. Ali is a champion, he’s chosen for the Olympics. They should take care of him. In another country they’d be proud of him. But here there’s no support. And you know what the security problems are like, roads closed, curfews. It would be much better if he could go to a training camp abroad.

06:36

Montage of all three characters finishing training and going home

Haider and Hamza comb hair and walk off

Dana packs up and comes off track

Ali gets undressed and heads out

Then we see Haider arriving home

What’s really messing up the Iraqi athletes’ chances, though, is the power struggle between old and new regimes in Iraqi sport.

All the dreams of Ali and the other athletes are held hostage by two rival teams of middle-aged men.

In the blue corner, the new Ministry for Youth and Sport.

In the red corner, the old Saddam Hussein-era regime, represented by the national Olympic Committee - once the personal fiefdom of Saddam’s cruel and whimsical son, Uday.

In May, as Haider and Hamza and the others were moving into the final stretch of their training, the government suddenly issued a decree dissolving the Iraqi Olympic Committee.

The International Olympic Committee jumped in and suspended Iraq from the Olympics to try to force the government to think again.

All the young athletes can do is watch the TV news and hope.

07:26

Haider Nowzad at home with TV

“I hope we’ll hear some good news about the Olympic Committee. They’re fast with the news. I always read the news ticker. I hope there will be good news for the athletes about taking part in the Olympics. That’s what we’re waiting for.

Dana, Lina and coach watching TV in Arbil

07:49

08:21

Dana Hussein

“I don’t know what to say to you. Really, if I don’t go, I’ll be destroyed. My family see me and say all this effort and exhaustion and not go to the Olympics?

If I don’t take part, if I’m banned, really, I’ll be destroyed.

I don’t know what’s going to happen.

“If they have a problem, they should keep it between themselves. What’s it to do with the athletes? These are their problems, let them work it out. Why should they prevent the athletes from competing for three years, or 10 years, or even one year – or even one day. It will damage us.

If you train and tire yourself out and then do nothing for just one or two days, you find it difficult when you get back to the stadium. If you’re out for a year or 10 years it would be a catastrophe.

08:48

Lina Haasim:

It doesn’t affect the Committee. It affects the athletes. They are the ones putting the effort in. Why? Why are you breaking the athletes’ morale? We want to achieve something for Iraq. To show there are sports people in Iraq. Educated people, people who want to raise the name of Iraq. Why do you always want to wreck our morale?

Dana crying

09:16

Lina Haasim:

“There won’t be any athletes left. Not one, after a year or maybe 10. 10 years! I am 17. I'll be 27 with 10 kids, how could I go back to sport? Who will be left? We are the ones who love sport. There won’t be anyone left.

09:34

Baghdad GVs

The middle aged men are unrepentant. This is the story of Iraq now – there’s less killing, but hatred and rivalry are paralysing political life.

09:46

Jaza’ir Sahlani, adviser to Ministry of Youth and Sport:

“At the first meeting of the Committee of the General Assembly which was formed after those elections, they extended their term for another 4 years.

That’s when the disagreement started, about the legality of that decision.

I think the decision was a dangerous precedent with regard to building a new democratic organization in Iraq.  Someone who is elected for one year cannot just extend their term for 4 more years. Even the Iraqi parliament couldn’t do that.”

10:15

Jaza’ir Sahlani:

“The Olympic Committee dealt with the elections with the mentality of before the year 2003.

I think that is a waste of the efforts of our friends who helped change the regime in Iraq.”

10:26

Olympic Committee headquarters

Baghdad GVs

Behind its guarded gates, the Olympic Committee of course says the Ministry is not defending democracy at all, but just trying to remove a rival – as it did when it sacked the Saddam-era national football coach when the team which won the Asian Cup  in 2007 crashed out of the World Cup in 2008.

10:46

Hussein Mohammed Naji al-Aamidi, Secretary General of Iraqi National Olympic Committee:

“They should have investigated and showed their evidence before making a decision. Up till now there has been no investigation, nobody has been summoned for questioning from the executive committee or any of the sports Associations, or any athlete, or any of the managers the Olympic Committee over these allegations.

11:05

Hussein al-Aamidi:

“I accuse the Ministry of Youth and their consultants. They have worked for 4 years, constantly, to dominate the Olympic Committee and the athletes. We tried in repeated meetings to achieve a result that would be good for Iraq and good for Iraqi sport, but they made these meetings fail because they were simply determined to disband the Olympic Committee.

11:40

Jadriyya club GVs

Gardens

Take away food stalls

The government does seem to be acting high-handedly. But the Olympic Committee under Uday Hussein had a very nasty history.

This sporting club used to be one of Uday’s hangouts. On the surface, trim gardens and evening barbecues. Behind the scenes, torture chambers where athletes and officials were punished on a whim.

12:04

Hassan, gardener

I saw them all.  The only one I never saw was Saddam Hussein.

Uday, Qusay, Ali the son of Qusay. I saw them all.

12:12

Men singing in swimming pool

In those days, these young men would have been too frightened to come anywhere near this place. The new manager of what’s now the privately-owned Baghdad University leisure complex still can’t quite believe he’s sitting where Uday once held court.

12:28

Abbas Mousawi, Manager of Baghdad University Leisure Complex:

At that time, under the previous regime, the club had enormous resources because he was in a position to do whatever he wanted to develop the complex since he was the son of the President.

12:51

Abbas Mousawi:

To be honest, I had never entered the club or even come near. We were afraid even to approach it.

13:04

13:21

Maher’s Mum’s photos

The cruelty didn’t stop when Saddam was overthrown in 2003 and Uday killed in a shootout.

In 2006, at the height of Iraq’s sectarian violence, the entire national Taekwondo team was kidnapped on the road to Jordan.

A few weeks later, armed men in police uniforms stopped a convoy of cars in the middle of Baghdad, and kidnapped the head of the Olympic Committee and 30 other sports officials. A few were released but most have never been seen again.

To this day, the families have no idea who was behind the attacks.

13:40

Mother of Maher Kamel:

“He said at first he didn’t want to go. Then the coach came and said you are a champion and this is the Asian Championship and you have to go. They took him at 6 in the morning. We waited for 2 days. I asked my sister if he had called. She has a mobile phone. She said no he hadn’t. I told her my heart is hurting, I’m suffocating. She said no, he really hasn’t called. I waited 2 more days and then  on the third day the coach came and said that Maher and the others had been kidnapped on the way that leads to Ramadi.”

14:18

Maher’s mother:

I ask the president and the Prime Minister to tell them to go to the graves and analyse the bones so that we know who they are. That’s all I want. Wasn’t he my son? I just want to be at peace. I want to go to the grave and make sure it is my son and see his name. There are 17 graves.

14:44

Haider and Hamza exercising in gym

The signs are that the International Olympic Committee does want Iraqi athletes to go to Beijing.

If it can’t make the government back down over dissolving the national Olympic Committee, Iraqis may still be allowed to compete as individuals.

But it’s not the same. The Olympics is about representing your country. And the uncertainty eats away at the athletes’ morale.

15:07

Haider Nowzad:

An athlete training for a championship needs to be emotionally prepared. Getting news like this knocks you a bit. But we’re keeping on training as you can see, I’ve been here training since the morning.

15:19

Hamza Hussein:

We’ve kept on training saying you never know what will happen. We’ve kept going up to today, and we’ll be here tomorrow – until the Olympics are over. We’ll keep on hanging onto a thread of hope until we know.

15:31

Ali watching TV

15:33

Ali Fakher:

What can I say, of course it damages your morale. It doesn’t give you much motivation to train and raise your game. But I am still training. What can I say. I will keep training and keep fit. But if the Committee is dissolved, I won’t be able to compete internationally – not at Asian or World level.

15:57

Dana, Lina and coach watching TV

Setup 1048-4

To win Olympic gold, you need amazing talent and extraordinary training. But even more, you need extreme mental strength. How do you keep that up when you don’t know if you’re even going to be allowed to compete?

16:10

Dana Hussein:

I will not stop training even for one day. I’ll keep training hard. And God willing, I will go to the Olympics. God willing. Through your channel, I beg all those who are making this decision to listen to us. Let’s all support each other. We are champions and we want to achieve something.

How can you let some maybe trivial argument between you destroy the future of a generation?

Camera Abdulrahman Hamza, Ahmed Ali

Producer Hareth Abdullah

Edit Producer and narration Paul Eedle

Editor Bernard Lyall