Sifan Hassan: from ‘shy’ refugee to Olympic champion

Jeddah - Yasmine El Tohamy - EINDHOVEN, Netherlands: On a gloriously sunny Tuesday night training session at the Eindhoven athletics club, young hopefuls are put through their paces, dreaming of emulating their most famous member — double Olympic champion Sifan Hassan.

It was on these tracks more than a decade ago that Hassan, a young asylum-seeker from Ethiopia, embarked on a journey that would lead to history at the Tokyo Olympics and make her a top medal contender in Paris.

“We immediately saw she was a talented athlete. Even a blind horse could see she would be a good runner,” said Ad Peeters, president of the Eindhoven Atletiek coaching team.

But her first appearance came about as pure chance and in slightly farcical circumstances, explained Peeters, also a middle-distance runner who competed with Hassan in the early days.

She tagged along with a friend representing the club at a 1,000m race nearby — and decided to join in.

“But 1,000 meters is two and a half laps of the track. They hadn’t realized that, so they actually tried to finish at the starting line,” laughed Peeters, 58.

“So that’s how we got to know her. We could already see she was a talented athlete at that time, but she wasn’t really a runner then yet,” he told AFP.

One of Hassan’s favorite mottos, taken from the Qur'an, is “with hardship will be ease,” and her formative years were anything but easy.

Born in Adama, southeast of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, she was raised on a farm by her mother and grandmother. Aged 15, she left for the Netherlands — she has never explained why.

She was first housed in a center for underaged asylum-seekers in Zuidlaren, in the northern Netherlands. She told De Volkskrant daily she cried there every day.

“I was like a flower that got no sun,” she said.

She finally arrived at Eindhoven to do a nursing course and fell in with other Ethiopians, some of whom were members of the local athletics club.

She took some time to “de-ice,” as Peeters puts it, describing her as a “shy girl” in the shadow of some of the more established Ethiopian runners.

Hassan herself has recalled training so hard “that my leg was bleeding” but Peeters tells a slightly different story.

“I actually don’t think she was lazy, but it was not always easy to get her to training on time,” he remembered with a chuckle.

“She didn’t yet have the discipline to do the training. But I also do not want to underestimate what it’s like to be here as a youngster, as a 17-year-old girl, be lonely, uncertain about your future,” said Peeters.

The club worked on her technique. She was clearly a “natural” runner, but “her legs and arms were going everywhere” said the coach.

But Peeters feels the club’s main role in her success came as much off the track as on it — helping her navigate life as a solo teenage asylum-seeker.

“We made sure she did not do the wrong things, neither in training, nor in her personal life. We kept her safe, picked her up by car to go to training, took her to competitions,” he said.

“We kept her in one piece basically.”

Progress came quickly, as did a Dutch passport. The Dutch athletics coaches recognized her talent and sent her to the elite Olympic training center in Papendal.

The rest is history: at the delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, she became the first athlete ever to win medals (two gold, one bronze) in the 1,500m, 5,000m, and 10,000m.

In Paris, she is attempting the even more arduous combination of 5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon — the first big test comes in the 5,000m final on Monday.

Despite Hassan’s success, her Eindhoven links have stayed strong, said Peeters. The club helped her financially at the start of her career and she would often return for training.

Hassan remains a club member despite living and training in the United States, and Peeters collects her fan mail.

Nothing stops the training, he said, but admitted the club would gather round the bar to cheer on their famous alumna in Paris.

“We don’t stop our training for football, but we do for Sifo.”