Sudan’s Country Profile
Official country name: Republic of the Sudan
Area: 967,499 sq miles (2,505,810 sq km)
Population: 40 million (2007 est.)
Median age: 18.9
Ethnic Groups: Arab 39%, Black 52%, Beja 6%
GDP and GDP per capita: $97.5 billion and $2,400 (2006 estimates)
Sudan’s Olympic History
First time represented at Summer Olympics: 1960
Gold medals won: 0
Silver: 0
Bronze: 0
Athletes at the Beijing Olympics: 9
Number of Sports competing in at Beijing Olympics: 2
Medals at 2008 Beijing Olympics: 0
Sudan’s Olympic Playbook
The largest country on the African continent, and one of its most populous (it’s in six or seventh place in that category, depending on Tanzania’s friskiness), has been going to the Olympics since the 1960 Summer Games in Rome but has yet to bring home a medal. Home, of course, has been a matter of dispute for a few million Sudanese, regarding the Beijing Olympics in particular.
The Sudanese government has been perpetrating a Genocide in its western province of Darfur for the last several years. One of the Sudanese government’s chief sponsors is China. The alliance gave rise to the term “Genocide Olympics”
“Yet,” as The Economist noted, “by branding the Beijing games the ‘genocide Olympics’, after the Chinese government turned a blind eye to the Sudanese government's atrocities in Darfur, human-rights activists are threatening to lay waste to the $1 billion or so that sponsors have paid—and turn what they hoped would be an association with a joyous celebration of sport into a tricky exercise in reputational damage limitation. Firms that criticise China publicly over human rights risk antagonising not just its government, but also its people—a billion-odd potential customers. Recent protests in China against Carrefour, a French retailer, in response to pro-Tibet demonstrations in France, highlight the dangers.”
The Sudan is sending nine athletes to Beijing, most of them track and field athletes. But their best may be elsewhere.
Look who’ll be hoisting the flag of the United States when that country’s athletes make it into the Bird’s nest for the opening ceremonies: Lopez Lomong, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan . He was born there, spent the first few years of his life there, was abducted by militias when he was 6 years old and forced to train to become a child soldier. He escaped, and spent the next 10 years of his life in a refugee camp in Kenya. He finally made it to the United States as a refugee.
Now he’s part of Team Darfur, “an international coalition of athletes committed to raising awareness about and bringing an end to the crisis in Darfur.”
As Lomong puts it on the front page of his Web site, “When we were in Africa, we didn't know what was there for us as kids--we just ran. God was planning all of this stuff for me, and I didn't know. Now I'm using running to get the word out about how horrible things were back in Sudan during the war. Sometimes these things are not on CNN, so if I put out the word, I hope people can get the information. Right now, similar terrible things are going on in Darfur; people are running out of Darfur, and I put myself in their shoes.”
In July 2007, Lomong became an American citizen. Two days before the Beijing Olympics, where he was to compete in the 1500m, he was told that he would be carrying the American flag into the Bird’s Nest.
If that isn’t a story to break all hearts coarse and jaded. Yes, it’s true that the Sudan itself may not have a chance at these Olympics. But what an irrelevant truth that can be when Lomong’s story points to the richer meanings of Olympic Games: there’s no need to deny that politics and world currents are an inherent part of any Olympic. Neither is there a need to deny that in the end, the flags matter so much less than the burdens each individual athlete carries—for himself, for herself, of for the causes and intentions of their choice. Sudan will have its athletes after all.
Sudan’s Athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics
Swimming
Adam Ahmed
Track & Field/Athletics
Abdalla Abdel Gadir
Ismail Ahmed
Yamila Aldama
Nagm Eldin Ali
Nwal Eljack
Muna Gabir
Abubaker Kaki
Durka Kalameya
