Kiribati fulfil the Baron’s dream

In the first Games after 9/11, it is perhaps appropriate that good news comes to the Olympic family from a geographical Ground Zero. Kiribat...

In the first Games after 9/11, it is perhaps appropriate that good news comes to the Olympic family from a geographical Ground Zero. Kiribati is an archipelago of 33 Pacific islands located at roughly the intersection of the Equator and the International Dateline and is about the best definition of Nowhere Land that you can get. Along with East Timor, Kiribati is also one of two debut-making nations at the Games.

The Olympic ideal, romantics say, is about turning up, not winning. A Kiribati National Olympic Committee official insists his team will be ‘‘most friendly’’ at Athens and have the most eye-catching flag (it depicts a golden bird with sun above and sea below). The tiny country, 100,000 residents and as remote as they come, will almost certainly not win a medal. That it’s made it to the Games, only a year after being admitted to the IOC, is achievement enough.

It’s been quite a journey. The Kiribati team flew from Tarawa (the capital city) to Brisbane to Dubai and finally to Athens. The contingent comprises two sprinters — one runs the men’s 100m, the other the woman’s equivalent — and one weightlifter.

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There are also three coaches, the president and secretary-general of the national Olympic body, along with two other officials. That’s a 10-member delegation, here just to tell the world they’re happy to be here! If international sport is bureaucracy by another name, the Kiribati crew has hit the ground running.

Training facilities are negligible to zero back home. Athletes usually train four years for the Olympic dream, sometimes eight years. The ever-smiling sprinters — sinewy Kakianako Nariki and his fetching compatriot Kaitinano Mwemweata — trained for all of four weeks, two in New Zealand and two in Australia.

‘‘In Kiribati’’, says Birima’aka Tekanene, president of the Kiribati National Olympic Committee, ‘‘we have no tracks. Our athletes run on gravel.’’ Nariki is the glamour boy of what is, perhaps, Athens’ most unheralded Olympic team. He’s the fastest runner Kiribati has ever produced, a local cross between Jesse Owens and Maurice Greene.

How fast is he? ‘‘Very fast’’, says his enthusiastic coach, ‘‘sometimes he finishes in less than 11 seconds.’’

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Forget the record-books, that’s simply the cutest sound bite you’ll get from Athens!