SUDAN:Winning a medal trumps politics for Sudan's Olympic hopefuls, writes Rob Crillyin Khartoum
THE RUNNING track is crumbling in places. Cracks mean runners in the inside lanes have to keep their wits about them.
Amid, the rubble and political unrest of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, Ismail Ahmed Ismail's dream of Olympic glory seems fanciful.
"First I need to get into the final. Once I am there then I will think about medals," says the 23-year-old 800m runner from Darfur. "Anything is possible."
Darfur activists in the West have decided to make the Beijing Olympics a rallying point for their campaign this year.
They want to pressure China into ending its support for the Khartoum government, which is waging war against Darfuri rebels. Stephen Spielberg has already given up his role overseeing the opening ceremony of what campaigners are calling the Genocide Games.
Yet for a handful of young Darfuris, Beijing is a place for their dreams to come true.
"Talk of a boycott makes me angry," says Ismail, who reached the 800m final in Athens four years ago. "We have people in the team from Darfur who are running. If we lost the chance of the Olympics we would have to wait another four years before having another chance."
His family comes from Wadi Saleh in West Darfur and are members of the Fur tribe. But he says ethnicity does not matter when he pulls on his Sudanese team vest. His room-mate, Abubaker Kaki Khamis, comes from the Misseriya tribe, whose mounted Arab militias wrought havoc in south Sudan, where they fought for the government during a long and bitter civil war.
They were the forerunners of the Janjaweed, who have raped and killed thousands of Ismail's tribe in Darfur.
Abubaker (18) is Sudan's best hope of a medal. Last month he was crowned world indoor 800m champion - the youngest ever - and since then has been feted by Sudan's president Omar el Bashir, had songs written for him, and been given parcels of land around Khartoum.
Like many young athletes his only dream is to earn enough money to buy his parents a house. "Everything else is on hold now as I go for an Olympic win, but I need to help my family," he said, at the simple village of prefab huts where the athletes live.
Abubaker may be pinning his hopes on gold, but he has to cope with the same basic training conditions as everyone else. The Olympic hopefuls use old paint pots filled with concrete for weight training. Their athletics stadium was never finished.
And there are no floodlights. All training comes to a halt when the sun disappears in the evening.Sudan has little in the way of a tradition in track and field.
While neighbours such as Ethiopia and Kenya dominate distance events, Sudan has not so much as an Olympic medal to its name. That could be about to change.
Jama Aden, who coached Abdi Bile to a world title in 1987, has spent the past six years trawling the country for talent.
Five of his young team have picked up sponsorship from Nike. The rest survive on hand-me-downs. By the time he has finalised his 12-strong team, he believes half will be from Darfur.
A donation from the British embassy in Khartoum is the only way he can afford to get his team to Beijing.
"The facilities we have are poor compared to what there is in the West, but the athletes make up for it by being keen and willing to work extra hard," he said.
"So that makes me upset when the western world says we should have a boycott. People don't realise that Darfur benefits from all this."