Iraq Paralympic Team ‘Better Than Olympic Team’
The Iraqi Olympic team has been through some hardships over the last few years. The tae kwon do team were kidnapped, killed, and buried in a mass grave. The head of the National Olympic Committee had the same fate befall him. Numerous other athletes over the last 25 years and three wars have been killed and maimed.
(Iraqi Paralympic weightlifter Zekra Zaki)
However, Iraqi athletes have a curiously positive outlook, developed out of necessity and perhaps a mark of the Iraqi people themselves. How else could they find slivers of upside in such horrors?
““As a country that participated in many wars since 1980, we have many disabled people,” said Ahmed Abid Hassan, a wheelchair fencing coach. “Our Paralympic team is better than our Olympic team.””
