Eindhoven, Netherlands: At Tuesday night's 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.
On these tracks more than a decade ago, Hassan, a young refugee from Ethiopia, began his journey to make history at the Tokyo Olympics and make him a top medal contender in Paris.
“We saw right away that she was a talented athlete. Even a blind horse could see that she could be a good runner,” said Eindhoven Athletic Coaching Team President Ed Peters.
But his first appearance came as pure chance and under somewhat comical circumstances, said Peters, a middle-distance runner who competed with Hasan in the early days.
She tagged along with a friend representing the club in a nearby 1,000m race – and decided to join.
“But 1,000 meters is two and a half laps of the track. They didn't realize that, so they actually tried to finish at the starting line,” laughed Peters, 58.
“That's why we knew him. We could already see that she was a talented athlete then, but she wasn't really a runner then,” he told AFP.
One of Hasan's favorite mottos, taken from the Qur'an, is “with difficulty will ease” and his early years were anything but easy.
Born in Adama, southeast of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, he was raised on a farm by his mother and grandmother. At 15, she moved to the Netherlands – she hasn't said why.
He was first placed in a center for young refugees in Zuidlaren in the northern Netherlands. She told De Volkskrant daily that she cried every day there.
“I was like a flower without sunshine,” she said.
She eventually arrived in Eindhoven to take a nursing course and met other Ethiopians, some of whom were members of the local athletics club.
She took some time to “de-ice,” as Peters described it, a “shy girl” in the shadow of more established Ethiopian runners.
Hassan himself recalls training so hard “my legs were bleeding”, but Peters tells a slightly different story.
“I don't really think she was lazy, but getting her to training on time wasn't always easy,” he recalled with a chuckle.
“She didn't have the discipline to train yet. But I don't want to underestimate what it's like to be here as a young, 17-year-old girl, to be alone, unsure of your future,” Peters said.
The club worked on his technique. She was clearly a “natural” runner, but “her legs and arms were going everywhere,” the coach said.
But Peters feels as off-track as the club's key role in her success — helping her navigate life as a single teenage refugee.
“We made sure that he didn't do wrong things, neither in training, nor in his personal life. We kept him safe, picked him up by car to go to training, took him to tournaments,” he said.
“We basically put him in one piece.”
Progress came quickly, as did the Dutch passport. Dutch athletics coaches recognized his talent and sent him to the elite Olympic training center in Papendal.
The rest is history: At the late 2021 Tokyo Olympics, she became the first athlete to win medals (two gold, one bronze) in the 1,500m, 5,000m and 10,000m.
In Paris, she will attempt a more difficult combination of 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon – with the first big test coming in the 5,000m final on Monday.
Despite Hassan's success, his Eindhoven link remains strong, Peters said. The club helped him financially early in his career and he often returned for training.
Hassan remains a club member despite living and training in the United States, and Peeters collects his fan mail.
Nothing would stop training, he said, but admitted the club would gather at the bar to cheer on their famous alumni in Paris.
“We don't stop our training for soccer, but we do for Sipho.”
