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Hassiba Boulmerka, a gold medal against religious fanaticism

BarcelonaIn 1991, the Algerian Hassiba Boulmerka won the gold medal in the 1,500 meters at the World Athletics Championships in Japan. When she returned home, she was received by the authorities and by thousands of people in the Algerian capital. Everything seemed perfect. But when he arrived in his hometown, Constantina, he saw the concern in the eyes of his father, one of those hard-working men who carries the problems on his shoulders inside, without speaking, resigned. “On the first Friday after my return, the imam of the main mosque in my city said in his sermon that I was not a Muslim because I was running around wearing short pants. It affected me a lot, because I am not very bigot, but I’m Muslim. Suddenly I realized that everyone was talking about me and the debate revolved around how I competed,” she recalls.

30 years ago today, Hassiba Boulmerka won the gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics in the 1,500 meters. He did it without covering his hair and in the shorts he always wore. Like its rivals. “Then the situation in my country was not easy. There was a lot of fanaticism. And they started talking a lot about the example I was giving. That’s why I was clear that my triumph was a triumph for all women”, she remembers . “During those years, I couldn’t do any races in Algeria. I had to compete and live outside, as it was too dangerous, I was threatened with death,” she adds. Algeria was torn down the middle in a vicious civil war where Islamists targeted whoever they saw as a bad example. And Boulmerka was a bad example. “I’m talking about fanatics, not Islamists, since Islam is something different. I believe in Islam, for example. They believe in fanaticism,” he reasons confidently. She is a woman with character.

The Barcelona Games of 1992 seemed like those of the beginning of an era without a cold war, with a united planet. A mirage Already during the Games, Sarajevo was bombed, there were wars in Chechnya or Moldova and hate speech was growing in Rwanda. And Islamism was getting stronger. For Hassiba Boulmerka, that gold was special because she got it by overcoming her fear of being the victim of an attack. “I was afraid to be in my city, Constantina,” he recalls. A town founded by the Romans in the interior of the country, where she was already racing at the age of 10. The fourth of seven children in a progressive family, Boulmerka remembers how at the 1984 Olympic Games for the first time an Arab woman won an Olympic gold medal, the Moroccan Nawal El Moutawakel in the 400 meter hurdles. On returning home, El Moutawakel was received by thousands of people and the King of Morocco himself. The same country that first condemned her to train on a track at a private school because they didn’t see well that she was an athlete, now surrendered at her feet. And Boulmerka dreamed of doing the same in his country. So he started competing and winning local competitions.

The beginning of the civil war

Hassiba became famous with her gold in the 1991 World Cup. And she became the center of debate in a country that needed joy. “When we returned to Algiers, we were greeted by thousands of crazy people, happy for that joy,” she recalls, referring to a parade where she was accompanied by Noureddine Morceli, world champion in the 1,500 meters in 1991. Morceli would not be able to win the gold in Barcelona in that race won by Fermín Cacho. The Algerian athlete misjudged his energies and finished seventh, disappointed. But in 1991 he was the king of the distance and shared the spotlight with that bright-eyed young woman who wasn’t ready to let herself be scared even though she heard increasingly hateful speeches against her. At the end of that year 1991, the party that had always commanded the country, the National Liberation Front, canceled the elections after the first round when they saw the strong support that the Islamists received. The army took control of the government and banned the main opposition parties, especially the Islamist Front. The civil war, which would last until 1999 and leave more than 200,000 dead, had begun. Boulmerka had to leave to train in Germany. He couldn’t stay at home.

“First I left for Berlin, especially after some graffiti at my parents’ house. The police told me they were serious, that they might kill me.” In Germany, she informed her family that she would be in solitary confinement because she wanted to focus on training ahead of the Barcelona match. It would not be until later that he would discover that he would not have been able to speak to his parents on those days either, as Islamists blew up Constantine’s telephone exchange just before the Games. The parents, however, were able to see on television how, on August 8, 1992, their daughter overtook the Russian Lyudmila Rogatcheva in the final stretch and crossed the finish line with her finger raised. “It was a gesture of defiance, to make it clear that he had won despite his threats,” he admits. At the podium, she cried, moved by the relatives affected by the violence and by the memory of a father who suffered a heart attack in those days. He suffered too much.

For years, Hassiba could not be with her family, as she went to live in Cuba, where the government of Fidel Castro offered her refuge until the violence in Algeria subsided. In the meantime she was world champion in 1995 at the Gothenburg World Championships, again. Always, competing in shorts. “I believe in logic. If I want to go to a mosque I put a veil on my head, but if I want to compete in the Games, what does the veil look like? Nothing. To compete, shorts. To go to the mosque, different clothes. And to go to dinner, a different one,” explained a woman who never wears a veil to the BBC a few years ago and who admits that in Barcelona she went from being surrounded by police every day to letting herself go a little. In fact, when she won the medal in the Olympic Stadium and wanted to celebrate with the other Algerian athletes, the police officers who were watching her surrounded her, just in case. Only inside the Olympic Village was the situation different: “You know what I remember about Barcelona? The party. There was a lot of partying in the Olympic Village,” he recalls. I needed it, after having arrived in Barcelona with a stopover in Oslo to arrive by a different route, just in case. For months she lived alone surrounded by security, traveling on strange stairs, sleeping in impersonal apartments. Boulmerka would retire from the competition after failing to revalidate gold at the Atlanta Olympics.

After the war ended, she returned to take care of her father, who was recovering from a heart attack. Hassiba was moved in 2000 when compatriot Nouria Mérah-Benida, also competing in shorts and without a veil, won gold in the 1,500 meters at the Sydney Games. Mérah-Benida cited Boulmerka as a major inspiration. The great champion of 1992 now combines a position at the International Olympic Committee with the management of a company she created herself that imports products, especially medicines. “I have more women working there than men. And everyone gets paid the same, depending on the work done,” she says proudly.

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