EINDOVEN, Netherlands: On a bright and sunny Tuesday night at the Eindhoven Athletics Club, hopeful youngsters put in their best effort, dreaming of emulating their most famous member, two-time Olympic champion Sifan Hassan.
More than a decade ago, Hassan, a young refugee from Ethiopia, embarked on a journey that would lead to history-making Olympics in Tokyo and a leading medal contender in Paris.
“We saw right away that she was a talented athlete. Even a blind horse knew she could run well,” said Ad Peters, president of the Eindhoven Athletic coaching team.
But her first appearance came by accident and in slightly amusing circumstances, explains Pieters, a middle-distance runner who raced with Hassan in his early days.
She ran with a friend who was representing her club in a 1,000-meter race nearby and decided to join in.
“But 1,000 meters is two and a half laps around the track. They don’t know that, so they try to finish at the starting line,” Pieters, 58, said with a laugh.
“That's how we knew her. We saw at that time that she had the athletic ability, but she wasn't a real runner,” he told AFP.
One of Hassan’s mottos, drawn from the Quran, is “Though difficult, it is easy,” and her formative years were not easy.
She was born in Adama, southeast of Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, and grew up on a farm with her mother and grandmother. At the age of 15, she traveled to the Netherlands, but never explained why.
She was taken to a centre for underage asylum seekers in Zuidlaren, in the northern Netherlands. She told de Volkskrant that she cried every day there.
“I am like a flower that does not receive sunlight,” she said.
She eventually arrived in Eindhoven to study nursing and met other Ethiopians, some of whom were members of a local athletics club.
It took her a while to “break the ice,” as Peeters put it, describing her as a “shy girl” in the shadow of the more experienced Ethiopian runner.
Hassan himself recounted training so hard that “my legs started bleeding,” but Pieters tells a slightly different story.
“I don’t really think she’s lazy, but it’s not easy to get her to practice on time,” he recalled with a laugh.
“She has no discipline in training, but I don’t want to underestimate what it’s like to be a 17-year-old girl on her own and uncertain about her future,” Pieters said.
The club has developed her skills. She is clearly a “talented” runner, but “her legs and arms are moving everywhere,” the coach said.
But Peeters feels the club played just as much of a role in her success off the pitch as it did on it, helping her navigate life as a teenage refugee on her own.
“We make sure she doesn’t do anything wrong, whether it’s during training or in her personal life. We keep her safe, pick her up by car to go to training and take her to competitions,” he said.
“We really kept her in one piece.”
Progress came as quickly as a Dutch passport. A Dutch athletics coach saw her talent and sent her to the top Olympic training center in Papendal.
The rest is history: At the postponed 2021 Tokyo Olympics, she became the first athlete to win medals (two gold, one bronze) in the 1,500m, 5,000m and 10,000m events.
In Paris, she will attempt to compete in the more challenging 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon events, with the first major test coming in the 5,000m final on Monday.
Despite Hassan's success, her relationship with Eindhoven remains strong, says Peters. The club helped her financially at the start of her career and she often returns to training.
Hassan remains a member of the club despite living and training in the United States, and Pieters still receives letters from her fans.
He said something had stopped the training session but admitted the club would gather at the bar to cheer on their famous alumni in Paris.
“We didn’t stop training football, we trained for Sifo.”
