EINDHOVEN, Netherlands: On a gloriously sunny Tuesday evening training session at the Eindhoven Athletics Club, young hopefuls put themselves through their paces and dream of emulating their most famous member – two-time Olympic champion Sifan Hassan.
It was on these tracks that more than a decade ago, Hassan, a young asylum seeker from Ethiopia, embarked on a journey that would make history at the Tokyo Olympics and make her a top contender for a medal in Paris.
“We immediately saw that she was a talented athlete. Even a blind horse could see that she would be a good runner,” said Ad Peeters, president of Eindhoven Atletiek's coaching staff.
But her first performance came purely by chance and under somewhat 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 in a nearby 1000m race – and decided to join.
“But 1000 meters is two and a half laps of the track. They didn't realize that, so they actually tried to finish on the starting line,” laughed the 58-year-old Peeters.
“So we got to know her. We could already see that she was a talented athlete, but she wasn't really a runner back then,” he told AFP.
One of Hassan's favorite slogans, taken from the Koran, is “with hardship comes ease,” and her formative years were anything but easy.
Born in Adama, southeast of Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, she was raised on a farm by her mother and grandmother. At 15, she left for the Netherlands — she never explained why.
She was first placed in a center for minor asylum seekers in Zuidlaren in the northern Netherlands. She told the daily De Volkskrant that she cried there every day.
“I was like a flower that has no sun,” she said.
She eventually came to Eindhoven to do a nursing course and fit in with other Ethiopians, some of whom were members of the local athletics club.
It took her a while to “chill out,” as Peeters puts it, describing her as a “shy girl” in the shadow of some of the more established Ethiopian runners.
Hassan herself recalls training so hard “my leg bled”, but Peeters tells a slightly different story.
“I actually don't think she was lazy, but it wasn't always easy to get her to practice on time,” he recalled with a laugh.
“She didn't have the discipline to practice yet. But I also don't want to underestimate what it's like to be here as a young person, as a 17-year-old girl, to be lonely, uncertain about your future,” Peeters said.
The club worked on her technique. She was clearly a “natural” runner, but “her feet and hands went all over the place,” the coach said.
But Peeters believes the club's main role in her success came off the track as well as on it – helping her navigate life as a solo teenage asylum seeker.
“We made sure she didn't do bad things in training or in her personal life. We kept her safe, picked her up in the car for training, took her to the races,” he said.
“Basically, we kept her in one piece.
Progress came quickly, as did the 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 postponed 2021 Tokyo Olympics, she became the first ever female athlete to win medals (two gold, one bronze) in the 1,500m, 5,000m and 10,000m.
In Paris, he is attempting an even more demanding combination of 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon — the first big test will come on Monday in the 5,000m final.
Despite Hassan's success, her ties to Eindhoven remained strong, Peeters said. The club helped her financially at the beginning of her career and she often returned to training.
Hassan remains a member of the club despite living and training in the United States, and Peeters collects mail from her fans.
Nothing prevents training, he said, but admitted the club would gather at the bar to cheer on their famous graduate in Paris.
“We don't stop training for football, but we do it for Sifo.”
