Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Wall Street Journal - August 23, 2004
Dan Morse, dan.morse@wsj.com
The U.S. has 499. Britain has 230.
From Botswana: one.
She is Lucretia Chima, a 27-year-old sportswriter for the Botswana Daily News. You want her job? When writing broad stories about the Games, she must paint the broad picture herself. When writing specific stories about the 11 athletes from Botswana, she must get beyond the phrase "failed to qualify."
"People want to hear about their athletes, and they want to hear something positive," she says.
In one sense, Ms. Chima isn't alone: There are at least 13 other solo scribes in Athens, hailing from Afghanistan, Barbados, Burundi, Chad, the Cook Islands, Eritrea, Mauritania, Mongolia, Palestine, Panama, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Swaziland. All are part of an International Olympic Committee program that pays expenses for journalists otherwise unlikely to come.
Readers in many of these countries could use the distraction that sports afford. Botswana suffers from one of the worst AIDS/HIV epidemics in the world, with 35% of pregnant women testing positive for HIV. Ms. Chima knows this up close. Before becoming a journalist, she worked in Botswana for an international health group -- and she alone distributed more than 10,000 condoms. She also was the voice of radio messages about testing and prevention. That led to journalism school, which led to sports writing. Just before coming to Athens, she wrote about football matches in which fans got free testing. "Sport has a role to play," Ms. Chima says.
Still, pressed with one too many questions about AIDS in her home country, she is quick to knock down the imagery the statistics create: "People think you see sick people all over the streets. You don't. You see people walking around. Kids playing. You see life."
Friday night at the track stadium, her hopes turned to Botswana runner California Molefe, who will try to advance in the 400 meters. Ms. Chima stakes out a position under the stands, so she can catch him after the race.
Ms. Chima watches the race on a monitor. California is running in the far inside lane, meaning he'll have to run tighter turns than his opponents. The race starts. California seems to start slowly. He picks up steam. "Cal! Cal!" Ms. Chima says quietly. "Don't relax!"
His time, 44.88 seconds, is nearly a half-second slower than his personal best. Ten minutes later, he appears under the stands, walking toward the locker room. He passes a gaggle of American reporters interviewing an American runner, then a gaggle of Japanese reporters interviewing a Japanese runner.
Ms. Chima greets Mr. Molefe, then gets right to the point: "What happened?"
"I had a problem with the lane," he answers.
Still breathing hard, he switches from English to a language he feels more comfortable with, and the two finish their conversation in Setswana.
The next few hours are confusing. First, the results make it appear that Mr. Molefe's time isn't fast enough to advance. Then it appears to be fast enough. Ms. Chima eventually learns that a runner from Slovenia aced Mr. Molefe out by a fraction of a second.
She sits down to write, telling Botswana of Mr. Molefe's post-race emotions, and how he went to sleep thinking he'd advanced. "Fate comes your way," she writes, "and you are out again."
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