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Thursday, August 19

Sprinter's first step is giant leap for tiny nation

ATHENS, Greece - Sometime Friday morning, a teenage sprinter from the newest nation in the Olympics, which has neither a television station nor a stoplight, will line up for the 100-meter dash.

When she is introduced, her country's name will likely be mispronounced. It was in the Opening Ceremony. In all three languages.

When she gets set, she will be poised next to competitors who do not come from a place where 80 athletes must share 10 pairs of shoes, and the runners train on a track of crushed coral.

When she races, she will represent a nation whose total annual budget of $37.2 million is less than the combined salaries of Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. A country 78 inches above sea level at its highest point.

``I am so scared,'' Kaitinano Mwemweata said. But when she is done, first place or last, the Olympic history of Kiribati will have begun.

Back home in the mid-Pacific, most will not see what happens. There is one TV for every 43 people, and the nearest station is 600 miles away. Many will wait to watch tapes in their local meeting houses, gazing at a billion-dollar event beneath a thatch roof.

Kiribati has 33 islands, 98,000 people, 29 miles of road, four flights a week, two Chinese take-outs and no gymnasium. The weightlifting team practices in the coach's back yard. ``Under the shade of the coconut and breadfruit trees,'' said Rokete Tokanang. ``When it rains, they stop.''

The team here includes two sprinters and a weightlifter. None has ever seen one second of the Olympics before. After being told they were staying in the Olympic Village, they became confused when they arrived at the campus.

``They said `This can't be. This is a big town.' I think they thought they were staying in a circle of grass huts, which is their concept of a village,'' said Rosemary Nula, an Australian who is the team attache and paid for its Olympic clothes by selling souvenir pins.

Nula had the athletes asked where they wanted to eat their first night here. ``We have heard of this place,'' answered one, ``called McDonald's.''

No drive-thrus back in Kiribati, where fish and the Pacific mean everything. Which is why it has the only flag in the world with a sea gull. ``How do I put this?'' said team chief de mission Inatio Tanentoa. ``Life is quite simple.''

``If you're running,'' said Tokanang, ``most people look at you and say you want to be a white person, an outsider.''

A British protectorate until independence in 1979, formerly the Gilbert Islands, it had one of the fiercest battles between U.S. Marines and the Japanese in World War II. The locals regular turn up leftovers. When Tanentoa worked on his yard, he came across bullets and a hand grenade.

To find any place in Kiribati, just go to the corner of the equator and international dateline, and ask directions. It lies in the crosshairs of both.

``We bent the international dateline (around some of the islands),'' Tanentoa said, ``so everyone could say they were first to see the new millennium.''

The athletes had no idea where they were going when they came here. Nor did the families and friends left behind.

``When they ask me where the Olympics are, I say Athens,'' Tokanan said. ``When they ask me where that is, I say I don't know, let's go look at a map.''

``The dream of Kiribati,'' Nula said, ``is for one of the big nations to say they'd give a scholarship to one athlete to come and train. Just one.''

And it's pronounced Kiribass. Tanentoa said he hoped they'd get it right in the Closing Ceremony. One small victory, before the long trip home.

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