Mohammad Ali lifts a heavy weight off Iraq's shoulders

For one Olympics, for one major competition, for once in his life, Mohammad Ali wants to be like nearly every other world-class weightlifter.

He wishes that his daily training regimen wasn't disturbed by the sound of nearby gunfire or the back-of-his-mind fear he won't return home safely. That his gym not be damaged by a rocket-propelled grenade.

That the only metal he worries about is that he lifts over his head, not that which frequently whizzes through his suburban Baghdad neighbourhood.

"That goes without saying, yes," he said yesterday through an interpreter, a few moments after living out a lifelong goal of lifting in the Olympics.

There were only a few hundred spectators in the spacious Nikaia Olympic Weightlifting Hall for Ali's third-place finish among the eight in 123-pound Group B - those whose qualifying totals didn't land them in the elite Group A that competed for Olympic medals. He completed two of six lifts for a combined weight of 561 pounds.

As he did so, thousands watched attentively on TV in Iraq, whose only Summer Olympics medal was a bronze in weightlifting 44 years ago.

Most of Iraq's 29-athlete Olympic delegation is comprised of the soccer team that upset Portugal in its first game, and Ali is one of only a handful competing in an individual event.

He is also in the minority because he qualified on his own with a ninth-place finish in the 2003 world championships. Others from war-ravaged Iraq and Afghanistan were nudged into these games by helpful International Olympic Committee officials who relaxed qualifying standards to ease the countries' return to the Summer Games.

The IOC reinstated Iraq in February after suspending the Iraqi committee in May 2003 after the United States-led invasion.

Ali, 23, has been lifting since he was 9 but, just when he should be peaking, his training in suburban Sadr City was interrupted by the US-led war.

Ali did some training in Bulgaria prior to the Olympics, but mostly was at home in Sadr City, where he lives with his parents and 13 brothers and sisters.

He feels fortunate that all are alive and well; earlier this month, a rocket landed close to the Iraq Olympic Committee headquarters in Baghdad, killing at least one person.

"For security reasons, I had problems getting around," he said.

Clearly, Ali does not live the pampered life of a Naim Suleymanoglu, the three-time Olympic weightlifting champion who is such a celebrity in Turkey that he has more than 20 homes there.

By contrast, Ali will go back to Sadr City once the Olympics end for what the final-year senior school (high school) student hopes will be a better and more secure life.

He is young enough that he plans to keep training for more world competitions; he lifted more than twice his body weight, 57.6-kg, in the snatch during world championships last year.

"I'm optimistic because things have changed, (with more) financial support and the general standard of living," he said. "I'm encouraged."

For now, standing safely on the Olympics weightlifting platform was accomplishment enough. "It was the most important thing to step there," he said.