Running into the future – the AIMS Children’s Series - By Pat Butcher
The AIMS children’s series is the result. Normally venues change every three years or so, but when you have a location like a refugee camp in the Sahara Desert, and see the enthusiasm of the youngsters in Dakhla camp, there need be no excuses for celebrating the fifth year there, with the AIMS Children’s Series 2010.
Once upon a time long distance running was for the few writes Pat Butcher. Most people, at least from my generation, would have run a mile to get away from running, and school cross-country put paid to most people’s potential enjoyment of the solitary pursuit.
Then came the running boom of the 1970s and 80s. Suddenly everyone was running, many not very fast, but they were running. And still are. Running is arguably the most popular participation sport in the world. AIMS owes it very existence to the boom.
But generations come and go, runners get older and even retire. Which is why it is incumbent on any sports authority like AIMS to nurture the next generation by introducing running to young people.
The AIMS children’s series is the result. Normally venues change every three years or so, but when you have a location like a refugee camp in the Sahara Desert, and see the enthusiasm of the youngsters in Dakhla camp, there need be no excuses for celebrating the fifth year there, with the AIMS Children’s Series 2010.
Dakhla is one of four camps in south western Algeria – the others being Smara, Auserd and El Ayoun – housing around 200,000 Saharawi refugees, displaced from the Western Sahara 35 years ago. Dakhla is the southernmost camp, near the north west border of Mauretania, and around 170k south of Smara.
The camps are named after towns in the Western Sahara itself, a land that was formerly called “Spanish Sahara”. On the death of General Franco in 1975, and under pressure from a Saharawi liberation organisation known as the Polisario, the Spanish withdrew, but neighbouring Morocco and Mauretania quickly moved in, claiming the land was theirs. The Mauretanians withdrew after two years of fighting with the Polisario, but the Moroccans stayed and fought until a cease-fire was declared in 1991.
Politics aside, the children's race in Dakhla must be the most successful of any like event anywhere in the world.
It was only 37C at 17.00, when over a thousand children marched down the long straight to the start of the half dozen races, which ranged from 300m for the youngest to 1000m for the early teenagers. ©AIMS
Held on 25 February, three days after the Sahara Marathon was run between the other three camps, the conditions could hardly have been less favourable, with temperatures in the Dakhla camp reaching 40C earlier in the day. It was only 37C at 17.00, when over a thousand children marched down the long straight to the start of the half dozen races, which ranged from 300m for the youngest to 1000m for the early teenagers.
The whole camp, it seemed had turned out for the event. Both men and women wear long scarves wrapped around their heads and faces, not from any religious conviction, but for the simple expedient of keeping the pervasive sand out of their mouths, ears and eyes. The majority of the thousands of onlookers reclined in the shade of the long wall of the school/sports centre.
The starting line was dignified by three tribesmen in blue ceremonial robes on top of three large white camels. And waiting at the finish line, to greet the competitors was marathon winner Jon Salvador, from the Spanish Basque country, and an extra special guest, a Saharawi athletics hero, Salah Amaidan, who boasts times of 3:39 for 1500m, and 28:53 for 10km.
Resplendent in AIMS tee-shirts, on both white and red, the children charged up the straight trailing clouds of sand dust behind them. Each finisher was rewarded with a substantial, specially struck bronze medal, and a prize of a toy.
It was hard to decide who was more enthusiastic, the children or the onlookers. But as the shadows lengthened, and a hectic hour came to a close, co-organisers (as they are of the marathon), Italian Mattia Durli and Spaniard Diego Muñoz declared the event the most successful in its five-year history.
Pat Butcher
Source: AIMSworldrunning.org
The AIMS Children’s Series 2006 – 2011: RUNNING INTO THE FUTURE - By Horst Milde
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