Somalia’s Country Profile
Official country name: Somalia.
Area: 246,201 sq miles (637,657 sq km).
Population: 9 million (2007 est.).
Median age: 17.6
Ethnic Groups: Somali, 85 percent; Bantu and others, 15 percent.
GDP and GDP per capita: $2 billion and $226
Read a complete country profile of Somalia
Somalia’s Olympic History
First time represented at Summer Olympics: 1972
Gold medals won: 0
Silver: 0
Bronze: 0
Athletes at the Beijing Olympics: 2
Number of Sports competing in at Beijing Olympics: 1
Medals at 2008 Beijing Olympics: 0
Somalia’s Olympic Playbook
Too bad Abdi Abdirahman is running for the United States. It’s not as if the American contingent is short of athletes in Beijing—in any sport. Abdirahman is a native of Somalia who attended Tucson High School and Pima Community College in Arizona, became an American citizen in 2000, and twice ran for the United States (at the Athens and Sydney Olympics) in the 10,000m. He’ll be running for the United States again this year in Beijing, leaving Somalia’s hopes for any showing at all on th shoulders, or rather the legs, of two athletes: Abdinasir Said Ibrahim, who’ll run in the 5,000m, and sprinter Samia Yusuf Omar, who’ll run in the 200m.
Very little is known about either, because when the focus is on Somalia at all—which is not often in the international media—it’s on the poor country’s fragmentation, famine and piracy in the Indian Ocean. Somalia has not been a happy place since the late 1980s. The Olympics could do a few things to lift the country from its chronic gloom.
As Smali diplomat Duran Faraha put it to Xinhua , the Chinese news agency, “We have gone through many internal difficulties in the past 18 years. It is very important for us to be part of the Olympic Games and see our flag raised here. Medals are not goals for us, we come here to represent our country and take part in the Olympic reunion."
Somalia’s Athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics
Track & Field/Athletics
Abdinasir Said Ibrahim
Samia Yusuf Omar
