Afghanistan at the Olympics

[Haris]

This is the team:

http://www.london2012.com/country/afghanistan/

• Massoud Azizi - Athletics
• Nesar Ahmad Bahawi - Taekwondo
• Ajmal Faisal - Boxing
• Ajmal Faizzada - Judo
• Tamina Kohistani - Athletics
• Rohullah Nikpah - Taekwondo

Naturally Afghanistan's only medalist hails from Wardag


...though he's not a Wardag...or even a Pashtun...but he still represents Afghanistan & that's what matters

[Admin Khan]

Awesome dude!

Wardags IMO are the most educated Afghans.

[Haris]

Ajmal Faizzada (AFG) lost in his Judo round of 64 elimination match with Mikos Ungvari (HUN).

[Haris]

Men's Fly 52kg boxing. Round of 32.

Fasial Ajmal (AFG) v Oubaali Nordine (FRA) today at 20:30 UK time.

[Haris]

Ajmal lost 22 to 5 but it was a good match especially towards the end.

[~Gangster~]

lol @ 22 to 5. He got killedd

[Haris]

The French guy had a bronze medal from last time and Ajmal was lucky to even get a place there.


Still though, he wasn't that bad.

[Haris]

My bad, the score was actually 22-9 not 22-5.

He got the 5 in the last round.

[Haris]

Tamina Kohistani will be participating in the preliminary round for the Women's 100m tommorow at 10:40am (UK time).

Looking at her personal best, she seems to be the slowest runner out of all the participating women incuding those in the other heats. Though she had her own set of circumstances which may explain that (poor facilities, lack of encouragement etc).



PB = Personal Best
SB = Season Best

I heavily doubt that she would get a medal though even her presence here is a big enough statement.

[Haris]

London 2012 Olympics: Afghan athlete
Tahmina Kohistani is learning to smile as
she finds freedom to enjoy her sport

Olympians could be forgiven for grumbling about unwanted
attention when they arrive at the Games: the endless
requests for autographs and interviews, the quirky welcome
ceremonies to attend.


Learning to smile: Tahmina Kohistani has enjoyed her time in Britain.


But for Tahmina Kohistani, the barely controlled chaos of London 2012 must
seem positively serene compared to her life at home in Afghanistan, where
her daily training sessions are conducted to a soundtrack of catcalls from
hundreds of abusive men.

Whenever the sprinter trains for the 100 metres at Kabul Stadium, crowds
soon appear to jeer and hurl insults at her and question why a woman
would even think of taking to the track.

“The people don’t like women to play sport,” Kohistani explains matter
of-factly, leaning forward on her sofa in the athletes’ village cafe.

“The head of the Olympic Committee said no one could come during
training but they did anyway. They wanted to disturb me all the time. They
were saying ‘can we run with you? Why are you running? It is not good.’

"Some days no one turned up, other days there were 100 or 200 people.”

One day about a month ago the abuse reached a higher pitch than usual
and her coach intervened. “What is your problem? Why are you disturbing
my athlete?” he asked them. Then a brawl broke out.

It was too much for Kohistani who realised the men were right, her Olympic
dream was madness.

“I just decided ‘I’m going to stop everything, I am not coming back to this
stadium. I was faced with very dangerous people.”

But this submission did not last for long.

“Whenever you want to do something you are faced with some challenges
and some problems,” she says.

“There is always one person who has started the way. I thought if I
stopped maybe whenever the other girls come they would also get
stopped. I should face up to this problem and change something in my
society.”

This stubbornness turns out to be typical of the 22 year-old. Always the
battling outsider, she is only the fourth woman ever to represent her
country at the Games.

Perhaps this indomitable nature is genetic: her family moved back to Kabul
just a month after the Taliban was toppled in 2001.

They had been living in Pakistan to escape the hardships of the regime, but
her extended family was not so lucky. Her aunts were forced to abandon
their education while at least ten of her relatives were killed.

This experience of ongoing warfare still colours Kohistani.

“Right now in my country every day there are bomb blasts, there is killing –
it is very important for me to represent a country that has lots of problems
like this.

"All the world thinks we just want war and we don’t do our best for peace
but it’s not right. We need freedom, we love freedom.”

That is not the only message she hopes to deliver over the next fortnight.
She is also determined to encourage more women to follow her out of the
home.

“In Afghanistan, society for women is not good,” she says. “They don’t
have time to think about themselves.

"All the time they just put their attention into their husband, their children,
their house. I am going to do this for the women of Afghanistan.”

The other five, male, members of the country’s Olympics team have
welcomed her, but even so, “sometimes when they are sitting together, I
feel very absent because I am the only girl”. This is why she will not feel
proud of competing in the Games until her country fields more than one
woman.

Changing this, she says, is more important to her than winning a medal.
Which is probably just as well, given that her personal best is 13.95sec and
she qualifies for the Games under the International Olympic Committee’s
universality programme to encourage more women to compete.

Though she is unlikely to progress far against rivals running three seconds
faster, she is determined to put in her personal best, and rightly points out
that she has often defied the odds.

She only went running for the first time eight years ago and has already
represented her country in the junior world championships, in Poland, and
their senior equivalent in Turkey.

Her performance in Poland surprised everyone, including herself, as she had
never raced on a track before.

“I had only just started running in running shoes on the grass in front of our
hotel and the next day I had the race.

"I didn’t believe I was going to do very well but when I finished I’d run it in
about 15 seconds which was good for me.”

For all her iconoclasm, she is deeply religious, putting off the Ramadan fast
for only a couple of weeks while she competes.

She will also let her coach choose which hijab she should race in.
But in a concession to the lighter side of her nature, she has been training
in a racier leopard-print version. She says she could not get away with it
back home.

“The people will never accept me and what I am going to do. But it is
different here because I am running in the Olympic Games and I need to be
relaxed with my clothes.”

She is relishing her first visit to the UK, enjoying training in Hatfield.

“There was no one to disturb me, no one to look at me. That was the very
best for me.”

Kohistani is most struck by how much everyone smiles. “It is the thing I
have learnt from your people – when I go back home I am going to do this
with my people also. It is the most wonderful thing.”



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/oly...her-sport.html

[Admin Khan]

London 2012 Olympics: Afghan athlete
Tahmina Kohistani is learning to smile as
she finds freedom to enjoy her sport

Olympians could be forgiven for grumbling about unwanted
attention when they arrive at the Games: the endless
requests for autographs and interviews, the quirky welcome
ceremonies to attend.


Learning to smile: Tahmina Kohistani has enjoyed her time in Britain.


But for Tahmina Kohistani, the barely controlled chaos of London 2012 must
seem positively serene compared to her life at home in Afghanistan, where
her daily training sessions are conducted to a soundtrack of catcalls from
hundreds of abusive men.

Whenever the sprinter trains for the 100 metres at Kabul Stadium, crowds
soon appear to jeer and hurl insults at her and question why a woman
would even think of taking to the track.

“The people don’t like women to play sport,” Kohistani explains matter
of-factly, leaning forward on her sofa in the athletes’ village cafe.

“The head of the Olympic Committee said no one could come during
training but they did anyway. They wanted to disturb me all the time. They
were saying ‘can we run with you? Why are you running? It is not good.’

"Some days no one turned up, other days there were 100 or 200 people.”

One day about a month ago the abuse reached a higher pitch than usual
and her coach intervened. “What is your problem? Why are you disturbing
my athlete?” he asked them. Then a brawl broke out.

It was too much for Kohistani who realised the men were right, her Olympic
dream was madness.

“I just decided ‘I’m going to stop everything, I am not coming back to this
stadium. I was faced with very dangerous people.”

But this submission did not last for long.

“Whenever you want to do something you are faced with some challenges
and some problems,” she says.

“There is always one person who has started the way. I thought if I
stopped maybe whenever the other girls come they would also get
stopped. I should face up to this problem and change something in my
society.”

This stubbornness turns out to be typical of the 22 year-old. Always the
battling outsider, she is only the fourth woman ever to represent her
country at the Games.

Perhaps this indomitable nature is genetic: her family moved back to Kabul
just a month after the Taliban was toppled in 2001.

They had been living in Pakistan to escape the hardships of the regime, but
her extended family was not so lucky. Her aunts were forced to abandon
their education while at least ten of her relatives were killed.

This experience of ongoing warfare still colours Kohistani.

“Right now in my country every day there are bomb blasts, there is killing –
it is very important for me to represent a country that has lots of problems
like this.

"All the world thinks we just want war and we don’t do our best for peace
but it’s not right. We need freedom, we love freedom.”

That is not the only message she hopes to deliver over the next fortnight.
She is also determined to encourage more women to follow her out of the
home.

“In Afghanistan, society for women is not good,” she says. “They don’t
have time to think about themselves.

"All the time they just put their attention into their husband, their children,
their house. I am going to do this for the women of Afghanistan.”

The other five, male, members of the country’s Olympics team have
welcomed her, but even so, “sometimes when they are sitting together, I
feel very absent because I am the only girl”. This is why she will not feel
proud of competing in the Games until her country fields more than one
woman.

Changing this, she says, is more important to her than winning a medal.
Which is probably just as well, given that her personal best is 13.95sec and
she qualifies for the Games under the International Olympic Committee’s
universality programme to encourage more women to compete.

Though she is unlikely to progress far against rivals running three seconds
faster, she is determined to put in her personal best, and rightly points out
that she has often defied the odds.

She only went running for the first time eight years ago and has already
represented her country in the junior world championships, in Poland, and
their senior equivalent in Turkey.

Her performance in Poland surprised everyone, including herself, as she had
never raced on a track before.

“I had only just started running in running shoes on the grass in front of our
hotel and the next day I had the race.

"I didn’t believe I was going to do very well but when I finished I’d run it in
about 15 seconds which was good for me.”

For all her iconoclasm, she is deeply religious, putting off the Ramadan fast
for only a couple of weeks while she competes.

She will also let her coach choose which hijab she should race in.
But in a concession to the lighter side of her nature, she has been training
in a racier leopard-print version. She says she could not get away with it
back home.

“The people will never accept me and what I am going to do. But it is
different here because I am running in the Olympic Games and I need to be
relaxed with my clothes.”

She is relishing her first visit to the UK, enjoying training in Hatfield.

“There was no one to disturb me, no one to look at me. That was the very
best for me.”

Kohistani is most struck by how much everyone smiles. “It is the thing I
have learnt from your people – when I go back home I am going to do this
with my people also. It is the most wonderful thing.”



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/oly...her-sport.html

Kohistanis are very active in Afghan sports. The soccer team also has a few Kohistanis.

[Haris]

I'm not surprised. They have a record for being fit & hardy people.

They were the most effective non-Pashtun force against the British invaders in the 1800s and are recorded to have fought alongside the Wardags numerous times to repel the British from Kabul in 1880.

I am sure that they were active participants in the Soviet war too.

[کیش]

She's thinking

I ain't leaving Britain; catch me if you can

[sunni]

taekwando is our hope to get a medals inshallah

[Haris]

As expected she came last in the race.













Our best chance of a medal was always with the two Taekwondo guys.