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OLYMPICS

Hopes shine for Olympic gold in London

With the Summer Olympic Games just 200 days away, Germany’s top athletes are putting their all into training, hoping to strike gold in London.

Published: 9 January 2012 10:59 CET
Hopes shine for Olympic gold in London
Photo: DPA

Among Germany’s medal favourites this year is 29-year-old weightlifter Matthias Steiner, who won sympathy at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics by dedicating his gold medal to his wife who was killed in a car crash the previous year.

This year, Steiner again faces a tough challenge – he is recovering from a torn quadriceps tendon that forced him to miss a weightlifting World Cup competition in November. Yet the 140-kilogram lifter, who was born in Austria but took German citizenship, said he saw his aim to compete in London was “very realistic.”

“This is a real challenge for me,” he said.

Women’s freestyle swimmer Britta Steffen is another athlete who has struggled with health problems. She won only a disappointing bronze medal at last year’s World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai.

But the 28-year-old seems to be back on track, securing three gold medals at the European Short Course Swimming Championships in Poland last month.

“When I’m healthy, I can once again be the super-Britta,” she said.

Click here to see the Olympic hopefuls

With the country’s national basketball and football teams failing to qualify for the Olympics this year, it will fall to the men and women’s field hockey squads to represent Germany on the pitch.

Though the women are not expected to collect medals, the men’s team which just edged beat Spain to win gold In Beijing, is hoping to repeat that feat in 2012.

“We know that an Olympic victory depends on many factors. The aim is, of course, a medal for sure, ” said men’s coach Markus Weise who has won Olympic gold with both Germany’s men’s and women’s teams.

But some medallists from 2008 may not be taking the German flag to London.

Hinrich Romeike a dentist born in Hamburg, won two gold medals in the equestrian eventing – a mix of dressage, show jumping and cross-country riding – in 2008, but hopes are dying that he can get his struggling horse ready for the games.

And though judoka Ole Bischof and slalom canoeist Alexander Grimm both won medals in Beijing, they still have to fight their way through exceptionally tough national qualifying competition before they can book their tickets to London.

Cross-country cyclist Sabine Spitz is perhaps Germany’s most unlikely medal hopeful this year. Already 40 – a ripe old age in the world of cycling – she has had to recover from two serious muscle injuries following her cross-country win in 2008.

Yet, she has crawled her way back to the world’s elite, winning national titles in 2010 and 2011 and slipping into two runner-up positions at the Mountain Bike Marathon World Championships.

The Summer Olympic Games take place from July 27 to August 12. German athletes have a long history of success at the Olympics, taking 49 medals in 2004 in Athens and 41 medals in 2008, placing in sixth and fifth places among countries those years, respectively.

DPA/The Local/mdm

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SPORT

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation

The Paralympics is full of stories of disabled athletes overcoming the odds to achieve sporting greatness but few bear the trauma of Jean-Baptiste Alaize.

Published: 28 August 2020 10:06 CEST
The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation
Jean-Baptiste Alaize training in Antibes. All photos: AFP

The 29-year-old French sprinter and long-jumper, who features in Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix released on Wednesday, was just three years old when he lost his right leg.

Not by accident or illness but by the brutal hack of a machete.

A child caught up in the civil war in Burundi in October 1994, he watched as his mother was beheaded.

“For years, every time I closed my eyes, I had flashes. I saw my mother being executed in front of me,” he tells AFP after a training session in Antibes, running his finger across his throat.

The killers left the Tutsi boy for dead. Alaize carries a large scar on his back but he was also slashed across the neck, right arm and right leg by his Hutu neighbours.

He woke up in hospital several days later, alive but missing the lower part of his right leg which had had to be amputated.

“With my mother, we ran, we ran, but we didn't manage to run far,” he says. “We were executed 40 metres from the house.”

A decade later, after coming to France in 1998 and being adopted by a French family, he joined the athletics club in Drôme.

Fitted with a prosthetic limb, he discovered that running gave him his first night without a nightmare since the attack.

“From my first steps on the track, I had the impression that I had to run as long as possible, so as not to be caught,” says Alaize who now lives in Miami.

“I remember like it was yesterday my first night after this session, it was… wow! I had cleared my mind. I was free.

“My energy, my hatred, were focussed on the track. I understood that sport could be my therapy.”

He tried horseback riding and enjoyed it, reaching level six, out of seven, until he pulled the plug.

“It was my horse that let off steam and not me,” he laughs.

The psychologist did not work out either.

“She made me make circles and squares. After a few sessions I told her that I wanted to change my method.”

However he did click with his school physical education teacher, who directed him to athletics after he had anchored his team to a spectacular “comeback” win in a 4×100 metre relay.

His classmates had no idea he was an amputee. He had hidden it to avoid teasing and more racial abuse.

“I was called 'bamboula', dirty negro, the monkey. It was hard.”

Fortunately, the Alaize family, who adopted him after he had spent five years in a Bujumbura orphanage where his father had abandoned him, gave Jean-Baptiste a base and a home that he had not had for years.

“When I arrived here I didn't know it was possible,” he said.

“I had lost that side, to be loved. I still can't understand how racism can set in, when I see my parents who are white, and I am a black child… they loved me like a child.”

His parents, Robert and Daniele, had already adopted a Hutu child from Rwanda, renamed Julien.

John-Baptist was originally called Mugisha. It means “the lucky child” which is not quite how things worked out. His new family name, though, suits him better. Alaize is a pun in French for 'a l'aise' – at ease.

The French disabled sports federation spotted the prodigy, and he began collecting his first trophies, including four junior world titles at long jump, three of them with world records.

“It was starting to change my life and I was happy to represent France,” he says.

He went to the Paralympic Games in London (2012) and Rio (2016), where he finished fifth in the long jump, just five centimetres short of the bronze medal.

Now armed with his state-of-the-art prosthesis, which he nicknamed Bugatti, he was dreaming of taking a step up at Tokyo 2020 and going home to France with a medal but the postponement of the Games has decimated his sponsorships.

“I'm still looking to compete at Tokyo 2021 or 2022 and Paris 2024,” he says.

“If I don't succeed, I will have to turn the page which would be sad.”

He hopes that Rising Phoenix will raise his profile and maybe attract some sponsors.

The documentary's producer Ian Bonhote is in no doubt that Alaize's star is rising.

“He bursts through the screen. His story will resonate,” he says.

“The nine athletes in our documentary all have different backgrounds, but none survived what Jean-Baptiste suffered. His disability was imposed on him in such a savage and violent way.”

Rising Pheonix is available now to view on Netflix.

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