Albanian runner’s lonely road to Rio
Print Edition
SHE runs next to leisurely joggers in a Tirana park — with no athletics track in the Albanian capital, Luiza Gega has no choice but to train alone and wherever she can.
But the tiny 27-year-old, a picture of pure muscle and energy, is building up to the 3,000m steeplechase at the Rio Olympics next month, where she will be a proud flag-bearer.
Albania has never won an Olympic medal and such is the desperation for national sporting success its footballers were honored by the country’s political elite after a 1-0 victory against Romania at Euro 2016 in France.
In contrast, when Gega finished sixth at the 1,500m at the World Indoor Championships in 2014, all she got was silence, complained her coach Taulant Stermasi. The former football player finances his sports activities through his real-estate business.
“To get money from the state one has to be in the five best... she finished sixth. How high are Albanian footballers ranked?” he asked bitterly.
“She’s the best athlete ever in Albania.”
Gega, who is in action at the ongoing European Athletics Championships, had long trained at the dilapidated Qemal Stafa stadium, Albania’s largest.
Constructed in 1946, runners complained the surface hurt their legs.But it had the only athletics track in Tirana, a city of around one million people.
Then in April, just four months before the Rio Olympics, Gega learned that it would be demolished to enable construction of the 22,300-seat National Arena stadium.
Prime Minister Edi Rama declared optimistically that it would be “one of the most beautiful (stadiums) in Europe.”
But for Gega there was a major catch — there will be no athletics tracks.
And she never imagined that the bulldozers would arrive so quickly, before the Olympics.
“I’ve been training at this stadium for years,” she sighed.
Gega headed to Korca, about 180 kilometers southeast of Tirana.
Stermasi brought hurdles there for the steeple event and made repairs to a leaking water jump.
The daughter of a cook and an agronomist, she would win school races but only started to run seriously at the age of 14.
Thirteen years later, on August 5, she will be among the first athletes to enter the Rio Olympic stadium and will be carrying the Albanian flag.
Gega will travel to Rio without a physiotherapist, a nutritionist or a masseur — unthinkable for the bigger names in athletics or many of her competitors.
But the authorities — who have promised to deliver an Olympic stadium, without giving a date — paid “1 million euros to footballers for scoring one goal,” claimed Stermasi, referring to the Romania win. “With proper training Gega would be in medal contention,” he added wistfully.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
