After four years of anguish... redemption beckons

Jere Longman's profile of long-distance champion Hicham el Guerrouj, written before the 2000 Olympics, illustrates his hunger to win after a bitter loss. It also has some interesting tips on training

Morocco, 16 May 2000:

THE photograph is wedged into a corner above the fireplace in Rabat, Morocco. It is unlike the other framed items in Hicham el-Guerrouj's room, the autographs of 16 other men who have held the world record in the mile, the magazine cover proclaiming him the mile's new king, the fist-pumping joy at winning his second world championship in the 1,500m. These are all tokens of victory. What el-Guerrouj keeps on equally prominent display is a reminder of forlorn defeat.

Entering the final lap of the 1,500m race at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, he collided with the eventual winner and fell to the track. He got to his feet and continued, but finished 12th, dead last in a race that he believed he would have won. He began to cry and a photographer caught his agony, producing the picture that el-Guerrouj keeps in his room at the Moroccan track and field institute: his left hand to his face, eyes closed, lower lip drooped in a disconsolate sob.

"I thought it was the end of my career," said el-Guerrouj, who was 21 at the time. "This photo gives me the power to work very hard, to break the world record, to win the gold medal."

Ten minutes after the race King Hassan II of Morocco reached him by cellular phone at the Olympic stadium. "You are the best," said the king, who died in 1999. "For us, you are the winner."

The Moroccan news media treated el-Guerrouj's fall in the same understanding manner, and Nike, his sponsor, even paid the $50,000 bonus it had promised for a gold medal, he said.

"The king is responsible for all Moroccans, and for him to say that I was still the best gave me a lot of confidence," he said. At that moment of the phone call, he said, "it was as if another el-Guerrouj was born".

A month later el-Guerrouj defeated the Olympic champion, Noureddine Morceli of Algeria, and in the following years he took Morceli's world records, running the 1,500m in 3min26s and the mile in 3:43.13. He has lost only one race since Atlanta, and will be a clear favourite to win the 1,500m in Sydney.

He will turn 26 on September 14, a day before the Olympics begin. He looks younger, with his boyish haircut and long thin face. God willing, he said, kissing his hands and putting them to his face, a gold medal would be a remarkable birthday present.

El-Guerrouj is the most accomplished athlete in this African constitutional monarchy, which has long challenged Kenya and Ethiopia for distance-running supremacy. He is also a symbol of possibility for the young in a nation where 70 per cent of the 30 million residents are younger than 30, where half the population lives on less than $50 a month and the illiteracy rate is 50 per cent. He is considered the most visible ambassador of Morocco, which is using sport in the hope of increasing its international prominence.
Rabat was unseasonably hot in mid-March so el-Guerrouj decided to spend a few more days training in the mountain resort of Ifrane, above the heat and humidity and pollution of the oceanside capital. This was el-Guerrouj's 40th consecutive day in Ifrane, living with other runners in a converted hotel, training on a local track and in the cedar forests outside town.

In a year he will spend four months at altitude, for the quiet and the increased benefits in oxygen-carrying capacity. The rest of his training is done at sea level in Rabat. He is one of 92 athletes, men and women, in Morocco's elite training program, which provides for the athletes with 17 coaches, three doctors and five physical therapists. Nutritionists take care of the meals, the federation serves as his business manager and the training centres in Rabat and Ifrane both contain small mosques where el-Guerrouj, a devout Muslim, prays five times a day.

If it is an athletically pampered life, it is also one of austere isolation. El-Guerrouj dates a university student. They plan to marry after Sydney but they see each other only once every month or two. He owns a villa and a spacious apartment in Rabat, but he prefers to live in one well-appointed room at the national track and field centre, a curtain separating the bedroom from the living room. He makes $2 million a year, according to Moroccan officials, but prefers to drive a tiny Honda sports utility vehicle, rather than the Mercedes that some of the other top athletes drive.

Mostly he lives the stringent life of a runner, training twice a day and sleeping and watching tapes of his races on television. "In my mind, if I don't do the same things as before, if I don't stay in my environment, I won't be as good," el-Guerrouj said. "I want to be close to the people, to live a simple life. In my country there are many poor people. You can't be bigger than the others."

While we were there, el-Guerrouj sent word that he had to attend a dinner at the apartment of Abdelkader Mouaziz, the winner of the 1999 London marathon.
A group of a dozen runners gathered around the dinner table, among them Patrick Ndayisenga, the national record-holder in the marathon from the central African nation of Burundi, who had come to Ifrane to train with the Moroccans. He said he had been amazed to see el-Guerrouj, a miler, training like a marathoner, running 20km to 25km in an hour and a half. El-Guerrouj also trains like a sprinter, running sometimes with a weighted jacket, dragging a tyre, and he does bounding drills to increase the propulsion in his ankles. The 1,500m has come to resemble the brutal pace of the 800m and el-Guerrouj better than anyone has perfected the gruelling training for speed and endurance.
"When he presents himself at the start, the other athletes in their minds are running for second place," Ndayisenga said.

El-Guerrouj grew up in Berkane, in northeast Morocco, near the border with Algeria, where his father ran a small restaurant. He had been a soccer goalkeeper as a boy, but came home dirty every day and, with seven children, his mother struggled to keep his clothes clean. "She told me not to play anymore," el-Guerrouj said.

When he was 14 he entered a cross-country race and finished second. A year later he won his age group at the national cross-country championships, left school and went to the national training centre in Rabat. His mother disapproved. "I told her I was able to be Aouita, or better," el-Guerrouj said, referring to Said Aouita, the 5,000m gold medallist at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Six years later, at 21, he was preparing to take the lead in the Olympic 1,500m race when he fell. As he stumbled to the ground he felt as if he were in a dream, and he could hear the crowd groaning as he hit the track. The collision with Morceli was an accident, nothing more, el-Guerrouj said. Four years later he is prepared to run again, and this time he believes he will win.

"He needs this medal," said Aziz Daouda, technical director of the federation. "He is the world record-holder. He can't miss this. If he does, it will be a big problem. Psychologically, it will be the end of his career."

Back in Rabat, el-Guerrouj ate lunch in the national training centre and told a story from his youth. When the family were out of bread they sent him to his father's restaurant. It was a mile away, he said, and the family would tell him, "Run fast, Hicham; you have seven minutes until the bread is cold." When he returned home, he said with a laugh, his brothers and sisters would clap as if he had just crossed the finish line of a race.

El-Guerrouj dressed in a suit for a meeting of Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund for which he is an ambassador, and for three hours he sat and watched slides and listened to a discussion about the plight of Morocco's children. The infant mortality rate is way down, but children as young as six are in the work force, and 50 per cent of the girls still do not go to school in rural areas.

El-Guerrouj is president of an association in Berkane that sends doctors into the countryside and provides scholarships for children. He recently purchased 130 wheelchairs for disabled youth and, during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, he and another man paid for his father to cook for 400 people each evening in his home town.
"There is so much fatalism in the villages; people say, `I'm poor, I will stay poor forever'," said Olivier Theo Degreef, the Unicef representative in Rabat. "But he is an example of, `If I fight, this is what I can become'."

Sitting still had made him stiff and tired, but el-Guerrouj insisted on his evening track workout. He would run 10 times 1,000m in 2:32 or 2:33, with two minutes' rest between. Benzriguinat, the military cross-country champion, would pace him through the first 600m, and el-Guerrouj's brother Fethi and Amyn, his other training partner, would follow at their own comfortable speeds. It was dark now, and pale illumination came from street lamps around the track. In the back stretch, el-Guerrouj was hardly visible, except for the flash of his spikes and the grace and power in the incessant stalking in his long strides.

Four, five, six times, he repeated 1,000m, and the others could not keep up, doubled over, agony in their breathing. Another pacemaker was brought in, but none of the other runners could finish all 10 repeats. They were reduced to cheering for the world champion, yelling at him in French and Arabic, "Come on, Hicham, go, go", and he sailed through his 10th repeat in 2:29 with a satisfied sweat on his neck. Benzriguinat kissed him on the head.
"That's why he is the champion," Benzriguinat said. "You see how he has killed us in the training. Three people, we are all finished, and he is still strong."

The closer Sydney gets, the farther away Atlanta seems. But of course, he can never forget. Every time he breaks a record or wins an important race, the television shows him falling in Atlanta and the newspaper articles refer to his disappointment in 1996. "I think it is a part of me," el-Guerrouj said.
But he has made a promise to himself. If he wins in Sydney he will remove the crying picture from above his fireplace. "I will put up a photo of Sydney," he said.

(Sydney Morning Herald)