It's a Ramadan Miracle everybody!‏

The excitement is palpable and the wait is over, four years of waiting for the prestigious games to hit our screens again, to hit our streets and our neighbourhoods, London is buzzy and excited and we are all united in that.

Largest and multiple small flags acquired, jerseys stolen purchased and betting tables started, as for tickets they’re an investment in their own right, and we’re celebrating our modest delegation with high hopes of glory and sporting miracles.

Just 48 hours ago, Algerian fans were plunged into despair after their last hope for a medal was taken away following Makhoufi being thrown out of the games, we thought the only way we can get our hands on a medal was if we casted the bronze ourselves. In fact it was so bad, we thought about claiming the Egyptian medal as our own– “droit de sol” was it?

But today, today is a different story, Algeria celebrates its First and probably only Gold medal won yesterday by Makhoufi after he was reinstated in the games, in what was labelled a very controversial affair. And Algerians everywhere, across the world celebrated proudly and loudly the victory of this young man who worked so hard and came so far to become an Algerian Olympian Champion.

The Algerian celebration and pride of the one medal was more important than that of the Brits with their 48 medals. It makes you think, what one medal, one victory could achieve, the tingling feeling inside, the pride, the tears, the inspiration and the joy.
So great big congratulations to our Champion and to the Algerians. It’s all a nice story.

However,

Let’s not give the credit to the government, this is a self made athlete who applied himself and committed to his sport in the same way Morceli, Mere and Boulmerka did the first time they astonished the world, and he followed suit in that too. 

And let’s try not to forget please, that our Olympic delegation is made up of 39 athletes and  some good elements,volleuses volleyeuses African Champions and 4^th world ranked Boxer etc…the rest remain relatively unknown, or frustratingly irrelevant, but amongst this group, Makhloufi has managed to shine, supersede and excel, whilst the others were too busy getting disqualified.

After watching with immense frustration, loss after disqualification after “too unfit to finish”, carrying on watching and supporting Team DZ, will take a bigger person or a more patriotic one than I am.

Our athletes are sent to the slaughter, some unprepared, some unfit and completely unmotivated and some seem to suffer from a syndrome I call “al mouhim al moucharaka” (1), where it seems the only achievement celebrated is coming to the Games itself and visiting Big Ben, so they do an act of presence and take it easy, rely on others to land the medals, maybe the Boxing team will get a couple and we’ll be off the hook!

But that’s the thing though, there’s no hook, if you win a medal you’ll get a car or some other insignificant reward, if you don’t manage a win, you still took part and represented your country “proudly” and that’s enough!

And besides, there’s always another breed of Algerians across the pond, who can take the relay and play for Algeria, it seems the standards are lower south of the Med.

Watching inspiring athletes like Phelps and Sir Chris Hoy, Ussain Bolt and Bradley Wiggings makes you wonder what makes them champions, hard work, dedication, support, funding, commitment, we all know this, we apply the same principles to anything we undertake in life, a 10k run, a triathlon or our day to day job which is what these guys do, they apply themselves to their jobs. 


If you play spot the differences, from a platform a mile away, in the dark, with smudgy glasses, you can see the contrast with our athletes, physically and performance-wise, apart from a few who make us proud and make their opponent tremble. let me not start on the laughing volleyeuses who giggled their way through to disqualification and gettting their asses kicked by the novice Brits.


Algerian Sport has been in the dark for years, a huge shortfall in infrastructure, of large scale sports politics, of talent-spotting competitions, funding and scholarships is to blame for the degradation of the sporting spirit and the aspirations to go beyond qualifiers.

Makhloufi’s near miss is a true testament to the Algerian federation disorganisation and incompetence, he might have been reinstated but this win is tarnished by controversy and polemics though this will eventually be forgotten, his gold will forever remain in the annals of Olympic history, and hopefully overshadow the controversy of how he got reinstated (deservedly) into the race. 

Where the Olympic Games inspire generations, make you cry with pride and tingle with excitement; our home athletes make us cry out of angst and frustration and disappointment, but last night here in London, the Algerian National Anthem resonated in the Olympic Stadium and made every Arab (allegedly) and Algerian out there proud, maybe even made some people over at the Daily Telegraph* tremble with fear at the tempestuous** tune.

Dz-Chick…..always going for bronze! 
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(1) it’s the taking part that counts

* the Daily Telegraph listed the 10 worst National Anthems at the Olympics, Algeria is 5^th


**Big word init