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TEHRAN: Growing up in Iran’s western Kermanshah province and
dreaming of becoming a basketball star, Homa Hosseini could hardly
have thought she would one day make Olympic history for her country.
Yet when the first round of the women’s single
sculls starts in Beijing, Hosseini will become the first woman to
represent Iran in one of the most physically demanding of all
sports.
She will wear a headscarf and an all-covering
outfit to abide by Iran’s Islamic dress rules but her taking part
marks another landmark in the growing participation of Iranian women
in high-level sport.
“I was in the basketball team in Kermanshah
province where I lived,” Hosseini told Agence France-Presse on the
shores of Tehran’s rowing lake before heading to Beijing.
“Then one day our coach said that the Iranian
rowing and kayak federation is seeking women who are tall and eager
to try a new sport for the national team.”
It is only in the last years that Iran has
started to push rowing for both sexes and the hopefuls chosen in the
original search process were subjected to tough physical tests to
check their potential.
Only a half-dozen women made Iran’s rowing
team out of 400 who showed up at selection trials.
“I started my rowing without any prior
knowledge or skill in the sport. But now after two years here I am
representing my country to one the most important international
games,” said Hosseini.
She secured the Olympic place for Iran in the
Asian qualifying trials in China a month ago.
The 1.8-meter tall but slender Hosseini, 20,
will row in Beijing wearing a headscarf and a sleeveless apron over
a long sleeved T-shirt, a very different uniform to the lycra
all-in-ones favored by most rowers.
But she said it will not hinder her performance,
“It’s not a problem.”
The fact that Iranian women are seeking to
compete at a high level in a physical sport like rowing is a sign of
increasing readiness in the Islamic republic to accept female
sportswomen in different disciplines.
After the Islamic revolution in 1979, it was
impossible for women to compete in international sports
competitions, where they would inevitably encounter men as judges
and spectators.
However, from the early 1990s, women began to
compete again, helped by a cautious relaxation of dress codes and
championing of their cause by Faezeh Hashemi—the daughter of then
President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Initially, women began to enter more stationary
sports where conservative dress codes could be maintained without
problems—such as shooting or archery.
Iran’s Olympics team also has two other
women—Najmeh Abtin in archery and Sara Khoshjamal Fekri in tae
kwon do.
Hosseini is realistic about her chances in
Beijing, where she will face vastly more experienced and powerful
scullers like the perennial rivals Bulgaria’s Rumyana Neykova and
Ekaterina Karsten Khodotovitch of Belarus.
“I know that it will be very difficult to get
to next stage of the competition, other girls have been training for
this game for the past five year, while we have just started the
sport in Iran two years ago,” she said.
“My goal is to be able to make it to the Asian
Games in Guangzhou in 2010 and the London 2012 Olympics,” Hosseini
said.
Asked to whom would she dedicate any medal she
won, a more somber tone emerged.
“I would dedicate it to my two brothers. They
both were martyred in war,” that Iran fought with Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq from 1980 to 1988.
“I asked for their help for this
qualification, and thinking of them gave me hope and calm, I owe my
qualification to them,” she said.
-- AFP
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