Eindhoven, Netherlands: In a glorious and sunny training session on Tuesday night at the Eindhoven Athletics Club, the young hopefuls put their hopes up to emulate their most famous member – two-time Olympian Seifan Hasan.
It was on these trails more than a decade ago that Hassan, a young refugee from Ethiopia, began a journey that would make history at the Tokyo Olympics and make him a medal contender in Paris.
We immediately saw that he was a talented athlete. Eindhoven Athletic head coach Ed Peters said: “Even a blind horse could see that he would be a good runner.”
Peters, also a middle-distance runner who competed with Hasan in the early days, explained that his debut came as sheer luck and in slightly ridiculous circumstances.
He tagged along with a friend who was representing the club in a nearby 1000m race – and decided to join.
But 1000 meters is two and a half laps. Peters, 58, laughs.
So we met him. “We could already see that he was a talented athlete at the time, but he wasn't really a runner at that time.” He told AFP.
One of Hassan's favorite slogans taken from the Qur'an is “Ma'al al-Musbarah al-Asli” and his formative years were nothing but easy.
Born in Adama, southeast of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, he was raised on a farm by his mother and grandmother. He went to Holland at 15 – he never explained why.
He was first housed in the Juvenile Asylum Center in Zuidlaren in the north of the Netherlands. She told the daily De Volkskrant that she cries there every day.
“I was like a flower without sun,” he said.
She eventually arrived in Eindhoven to do a nursing course and socialized with other Ethiopians, some of whom were members of the local athletics club.
She spent some time “de-icing,” as Peters puts it, describing her as a “shy girl” in the shadow of some of Ethiopia's more established runners.
Hassan himself recalls training so hard that “my leg was bleeding,” but Peters tells a slightly different story.
“I actually don't think he was lazy, but it wasn't always easy to get him to practice on time,” he recalls with a laugh.
He still did not have the necessary discipline to do the exercises. “But I also don't want to underestimate that being here as a young person, as a 17-year-old girl, being alone, uncertain about your future.”
The club worked on his technique. He was clearly a “natural” runner, but his “legs and arms were going all over the place,” the coach said.
But Peters feels the club was as instrumental in his success as it was in helping him navigate his life as a solitary teenage refugee.
We made sure he didn't do anything wrong, neither in training nor in his personal life. “We kept him safe, we drove him to practice, we drove him to races.”
“We kept him in one piece.”
Progress happened quickly, like the Dutch passport. Dutch athletics coaches recognized his talent and sent him to the Olympic Elite Training Center in Papendal.
The rest is history: At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, he became the first athlete to win medals (two gold, one bronze) in the 1,500m, 5,000m and 10,000m.
In Paris, she is tackling the more difficult combination of 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon – the first big test coming in the 5,000m final on Monday.
Despite Hassan's success, his Eindhoven ties remain strong, Peters said. The club helped him financially to start his career and he often returned to train.
Despite living and training in the United States, Hassan is a member of the club, and Peters collects his fan mail.
He said nothing would stop him from training, but admitted that the club would gather around the bar to cheer on their famous graduates in Paris.
We don't stop training for football, but we do for Sifu.
