Lebanon's Hopes from Beirut to Beijing

Cedar Smile: Sprinter Gretta Taslakian, one of six Lebanese athletes in Beijing, carries Lebanon's Olympic hopes. (Photo by Ibrahim Ibrahim, via Flickr).

It's been a rough couple of years coming on top of a rough couple of decades for Lebanon: The assassination of a respected prime minister in 2005, Hezbollah's war with Israel in 2006, an endless constitutional crisis that left the country without a president and teetering on the verge of another civil war for most of 2007 and parts of 2008 until the belated election of Michel Suleiman in June and the formation, just last month, of a "unity" government. This very evening the Lebanese Parliament was meeting in an extraordinary session to consider Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's call to ratify, with a vote of confidence, his cabinet's blueprint for governance in the year ahead. Nothing said he would get the vote.

For the Lebanese, who've always had keen interest in the Olympics (cheering for every team in the world but their beleaguered if valiant own), the next couple of weeks should prove a welcome break. Easier to pay attention to Beijing than Beirut. And in any case Lebanon already has its first gold medal, even before the Games' first medals were awarded.

From Lebanon's Daily Star: "A painting by Lebanese artist Lina Kilikian won the gold medal at an international exhibition of art in China preceding and accompanying the 2008 Olympic Games opening on Friday in Beijing. For the exhibit entitled Colors and the Olympics, in which hundreds of sculptures and paintings by about 700 artists from 81 countries around the world were competing, Kilikian submitted three works, one of which won."

And here's how Kilikian described her work:

This painting reflects the suffering of the earth and human beings. Yet, it leaves some white spaces for hope. That is how I was seeing the globe at that moment. I am proud of this award, and I offer it to my country, Lebanon, which has started paving the way to stability and prosperity.

The Lebanese have their country's Armenian heritage to thank for Kilikian, whose achievement at least one member of Lebanon's Olympic team, also of Armenian heritage, hopes to echo: sprinter Gretta Taslakian, one of six athletes representing Lebanon in Beijing, will be running in the 200m.

See Also:

• Rankings and profiles of Middle East countries' Olympic histories
• 1956: The Year Lebanon boycotted the Melbourne Olympics
• Munich 1972: When 11 Israeli Athletes were Murdered
• Lebanon: Country Profile