London 2012 Olympics: Rwanda, An Unforgettable Olympic Country

Rwanda ---Welcome to London 2012

Sport is not a name associated with Rwanda, but by July 1996, the then war-torn nation (through the 70s, known as the "Switzerland of Africa" due to its extraordinary landscapes with lakes, rivers, and high mountains) made international headlines when it was represented by four athletes at the Atlanta Centennial Games. It was a memorable moment when Rwanda's national contingent entered the Stadium, while behind them had a tiny country devastated by genocidal wars, killing fields, corruption, rapes, poverty, and killing of gorillas (the country's national symbol). During the 1990-1996 civil conflict, over one million people were slaughtered.

Unlike its twin Burundi (which astonishingly won a gold medal in athletics at Atlanta'96), the Rwandan team did not win medals in Georgia, but they captured the hearts of people all around the globe through sport, becoming international heroes as occurred when the delegation of Bosnia Herzegovina came to Barcelona four years earlier. In fact, the country's sportsmen gave a lesson of courage, determination, and Olympic spirit, after overcoming obstacles and setbacks to go to America. Without a doubt, runner Mathias Ntawulikura was one of them. With his eighth place in the men's 10,000m (track & field), distance runner Ntawulikura had become the country's most successful athlete on the Olympic stage (no other Rwandan athlete had ever reached the finals), followed by Marcianne Mukamurenzi, who placed 38th in the women's marathon in Seoul in 1988.

London 2012 Olympics: Rwanda, An Unforgettable Olympic Country

In the Kingdom of Gorillas!

Traditionally, the country participates with distance runners and freestyle swimmers in the multi-sport event. In the meantime, it has not yet competed in team sports, such as football or basketball, in the Olympic Championships.

The Francophone nation of Rwanda, bordered by Burundi, RD of the Congo, Tanzania and Uganda, made its international debut in the event exactly in 1984 when the national delegation competed in the Games of the 23rd Olympiad in Los Angeles (CA). In the States, the landlocked nation of Rwanda -geographically it is the size of Maryland/Wales--- was represented by one of the smallest athletic contingents of the Third World. It was a time when the African republic, independent since the early 1960s after being an absolutist monarchy for centuries, was ruled by Juvenal Habyarimana, a military warlord who came to power during a coup d'etat in the early 1970s.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, in many ways, the mountainous country ---which has one of the world's most delicious coffees-- was a peaceful place and friendly land ---unlike Uganda, Mozambique and Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) at the time- despite being one of East Africa's poorest republics.

In other aspects, this land began to be well-known worldwide for the mountain gorillas thanks to Dian Fossey's works and articles, which were published in the prestigious National Geographic magazine. However, who could have imagined that Rwanda would be a war-torn country in the following decades.

Rwanda At the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games

Its second participation occurred in the 1988 Korea Olympiad, a year after attending the 1987 African Games. The Rwandan Olympic Committee sent a six-person team at Seoul, competing in athletics. On South Korean soil, Miss Mukamurenzi became one of the most successful national athletes at the Summer Olympics upon finishing 38th in the Second Women's Olympian Marathon in October 1988. Historically, she was one of the two most respected runners in Africa's Great Lakes region in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Aside from winning the 10,000 in the Regional Championships, she set two Rwandan records at that year. A year ago, she was runner-up to Leah Malot of Kenya in the women's 10,000m in the 1987 Continental Games with a time of 33:58.55 and finished as one of the 27th best marathon runners in the World Tournament in Italy. In the early 1990s, she had her best performance when she was top ten in the Global Cup. Distance runner Mukamurenzi, on the other hand, trained in the altitude of Rwanda, a region ideal for runners and marathoners.

By 1992, four years later, in the Spaniard city of Barcelona, there were representatives in two sports: cycling and track and field, both traditional sports on Rwandan soil. With a total of 10 sportsmen and women, the 1992 national team is the largest delegation in country's Olympic history.

In the quadrennial Olympic Games in Sydney (Australia) in 2000, there were national participants in athletics and swimming. There, the country's sporting idol Ntawulikura made his fourth consecutive participation, leaving an important legacy for Rwanda's Olympic system. In the next Summer Games, the nation's sports officials sent runners and swimmers to Athens (Greece). By 2008, once again Rwanda's athletic team competed in aquatics and track and field and was one of the smallest delegations on Earth in the multi-sport event in China mainland.

By July 2012, the Rwandan Olympic Committee plans to send a small delegation, integrated by four/five athletes, to the United Kingdom. Up to now, Jean Pierre Mvuyekure, a marathoner runner, and Adrien Niyonshuti, a cyclist, have qualified for the 2012 London Games. Rwanda's cycling did not compete in the Games since 1992. Meanwhile, the landlocked nation could also compete in sports such as boxing, judo, and swimming. Currently, Mr. Fred Yannick Sekamana is by far the most outstanding athlete in the Francophone republic. Like most African athletes, this judoka lives and trains in France.

London 2012 Olympics: Rwanda, An Unforgettable Olympic Country
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Alejandro Guevara Onofre: Within a span of three years, Alejandro has produced a host of high-quality articles/essays about cultures of the world --"re-discovering countries" and exploring exotic locations -from Chad to Vietnam, from Kosovo to the paradise island of Dominica - and new biographies (from such disparate individuals as Lionel Messi, Halle Berry, Jose Gamarra Zorrilla...). He also has made a name for himself as an expert on Summer Olympics, becoming the top "Olympian author" at Ezinearticles.com; stories based on athletic perseverance and Olympian spirit in global sports, including the United States of America. Under this backdrop, he has declared himself as "the world's No. 1 fan of the Olympics". As a keen sports fan, he says "I am passionate about sport--writing about it, playing it, watching it, and talking..."

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London 2012 Olympics: Edwin Vasquez Cam - The Greatest Peruvian Athlete of All Time!

Despite being known as a football-loving nation on the world stage, the republic of Peru, a Spanish-speaking country on the South American continent since the 1820s, has won the Olympian glory thanks to its international shooters, who have picked up a total of three medals in the Summer Games between 1948 and 1992. According to these results, unequivocally, the greatest Peruvian athlete is Edwin Vasquez Cam, an Olympic gold medalist.

Edwin Vasquez Cam

Edwin Vasquez Cam was born on July 28 1922, in Lima, Peru's capital city. Encouraged by his father, who was a former shooter, he competed in several shooting competitions in Lima and other Peruvian cities. Over the next years, he spent several hours with his father, Mr. Gonzalo Vasquez, his coach and best friend. By 1938, Edwin won a school championship, but that was only the beginning.

London 2012 Olympics: Edwin Vasquez Cam - The Greatest Peruvian Athlete of All Time!

When Edwin was only 18 years old, he finished first in the Gildelmeister Cup, a traditional event in Lima, defeating many veteran athletes. Since then, Edwin's ambition was to become one of top shooters on Peruvian soil. The following year, he was crowned as the "best shooter" in a major contest. By latter the mid-1940s, Edwin won a gold at the Bolivarian Games at home after winning the Continental tournaments.

With limited international experience, by 1948, Edwin Vasquez and his fellow athletes made a travel to compete in the Olympics in the United Kingdom. The South American delegation competed in seven sports: athletics, men's basketball, boxing, cycling, fencing, shooting, and weightlifting. In the British capital, on the other hand, nine shooters participated for Peru: Edwin, Cesar Injoque, Raul Valderrama, Wenceslao Salgado, Luis Mantilla, Froilan Tantalean, Enrique Mendizabal, and brothers Enrique and Guillermo Baldwin.

Peru's champ Edwin Vasquez Cam became the first non-American/European shooter to win an Olympic title when he captured a gold in the Games of the XIV Olympiad in London, UK's capital. In that day, on August 2, 1948, surprisingly Sweden's marksman Torsten Ullman was beaten by Mr. Vasquez Cam. Ullman, gold medalist at the 1936 Olympics and four-time world champ (1933, 1935, 1937, & 1947), had been the favorite to win the gold in the free pistol in the Olympic Shooting Championship, a sporting event traditionally dominated by the United States and Western Europe since its inclusion in the First Games in 1896.

Edwin won with 545 points, followed by Switzerland's Rudolph Schnyder (silver medal) and Ullman (bronze), both with 539 points. It was a day of national pride not only to Peru but also to the continent. Upon Vasquez's win, the country became one of the first five Latin American republics to win an Olympic gold medal in the 20th Century, alongside Cuba, Uruguay, Argentina, and Mexico. But within few years he was forgotten despite his status like an Olympian winner.

Peru did not win any other Olympic medal until 1984 when Edwin Vasquez's successor, Francisco -known as "Pancho"- Boza surprisingly was runner-up at the Los Angeles Olympic Games. Prior to the international Games, he had been trained by Konrad Wirnhier, an Olympic gold medalist in 1972, in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Pan American Champion

Mr. Vasquez, upon winning the global title in Britain, helped his nation's Olympic team to win a gold medal at the 1951 Pan American Games in Buenos Aires (Argentina), a world-class competition in the Western Hemisphere. In addition to these awards, he also earned many international contests.

Despite being one of the most high-profile athletes in Latin American and the Caribbean at that time, unfortunately, Mr. Vasquez and other members of the Peruvian squad, among them Julia Sanchez Deze (Pan American gold medalist in 1951), could not go to Helsinki (Finland) to participate in the Olympiad in 1952. For absurd reasons, Peru's then-dictator Manuel Odria refused to send a national delegation to Scandinavia.

An Unknown Olympic Champion

Historically, Peru's Olympic champ Edwin Vasquez is the only shooter from Latin America to have won an Olympic gold medal. In the last sixty years, the continent sent some notable shooters to the international Games, but none of them captured the Olympic glory. From 1972 to 1984, Helmut Bellingrodt -Colombia's most outstanding athlete in 1974-- won two silvers. In the meantime, Mexico's Olegario Vasquez, upon winning a gold medal in the 1975 Pan American Games and set a new world record, failed to earn the Olympic competition at the 1976 Montreal Games. By 1988, Chile's Alfonso de Iruarrizaga finished second in the Olympiad in Asia. At the 25th Olympiad in 1992, Peru's athlete Juan Giha, whose coach Bruno Sarti did not go to Spain due to a lack of resources, came in second place.

Despite being the greatest Peruvian Olympian in history of this country's sports, Edwin Vasquez Cam, unfortunately, is still a sporting figure unknown for millions of Peruvians. On March 9, 1993, unfortunately, he passed away. Ironically, his death was largely unnoticed by the national media. In a country that has not had an Olympic champ since 1948 and never world winners, he should be an important model for Peru's boys and girls, paving the way for a new generation of champions.

London 2012 Olympics: Edwin Vasquez Cam - The Greatest Peruvian Athlete of All Time!
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Alejandro Guevara Onofre: Freelance writer. Alejandro is author of a host of articles/essays about over 220 countries and dependencies (and American States as well), from ecology, history, tourism and national heroes to Olympic sports, foreign relations, and wildlife. In addition, he has published some books on women's rights, among them "History of the Women of the United States" and "Famous Americans."

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London 2012 Olympics: The Kingdom of Tonga - An Olympic Nation in the South Pacific

Discovering Olympic Countries: Tonga

Officially known as the Kingdom of Tonga (also known as the Friendly islands), the archipelago lies in the Western South Pacific, between Niue (overseas territory of New Zealand) and the island-nation of Fiji, being one of Oceania's last monarchies and among the smallest states in the region. The tiny nation consists of a chain of 170 volcanic islands. There are more than 100,000 inhabitants. On June 4, 1970, the archipelago became the world's youngest state when it gained full independence from the United Kingdom. Nuku'alofa is the national capital and largest city.

Politically, it is an ally of America's administration since the early 1970s. Furthermore, Tonga is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Like most of Oceania's island-nations, this land possesses picture-postcard beaches and rich marine life. On the economic side, it is one of the least-developed places in the region. On the other hand, Tonga's long dream of competing in the Summer Olympics occurred in 1984 when it sent a group of fledgling athletes to Los Angeles (CA).

London 2012 Olympics: The Kingdom of Tonga - An Olympic Nation in the South Pacific

Sport in Tonga: From Rugby to Football

Sport was influenced in large part by the United Kingdom when the archipelago was a Briton protectorate. With the exception of rugby, the island's Olympic sport has a low profile on the continent of Oceania since 2000.

There are five popular Olympic sports on the South Pacific island-nation: soccer (or football), athletics, boxing, weightlifting, and tennis. In recent decades, water sports are a favorite outdoor activity on the island, from aquatics to sailing. Netball is other important sport, especially among women. Nonetheless, the islanders have a "big passion" for rugby -certainly a Briton legacy--- having qualified for the international meets. Since then, this European sport is the country's national pastime as happens in most of Oceania's independent states and dependencies. In fact, football has become a favorite sport for the island's population, who are avid soccer watchers when the men's national football team of Tonga plays, especially during the pre-Cup World tournaments (at home and abroad).

Tonga's major Olympic heroes are Tevita Taufoou and Peae Takaunove Wolfgramm (both boxers). The nation's Olympian athletes majority have been boxers, weightlifters, and sprinters. Like Swaziland's Olympic delegation, the national athletes sometimes wear traditional dresses and "leis" - it is made of flowers (orchids & jazmine) strung together-- as necklaces during the Parade of Nations. Aside from attending the Summer Olympics, the Tongan Olympic Committee competes in the Olympic-type South Pacific Games, and other multi-sport events such as the World University Games and the traditional Commonwealth Games (an event for entries from Anglophone countries).

Tonga At the Summer Games

Most of Tonga's population seem to have an athletic type for sports such as judo, wrestling, weightlifting, boxing, and field events (and American football, of course), Curiously, they are taller and stronger than the other islanders of the Pacific South. Due to this, there are some interesting performances in boxing despite being a sport without international experience.

On the global stage, the first Olympic islanders were who participated in the Games of the 23rd Olympiad in 1984 in Southern California, America (where there is one of the largest Tongan communities outside the archipelago). Its long-awaited international debut was interesting especially when its national star, the fighter Tevita Taufoou, was able to qualify for the first rounds and then to emerge as one of the world's top five boxers in the heavyweight category (91kg/120lbs). He was a key member of the nation's seven-male delegation at Los Angeles '84, an Olympiad boycotted by the Kremlin and its Soviet proxies. Once back on Tongan soil, Tevita was a focus of national pride in Nuku'alofa.

In California, Tevita was one of the most prominent athletes from Oceania in the Olympic Boxing Championship, paving the way for future fighters on the island of Tonga, which just occurred in the mid-1990s when an islander, of German heritage, put the Tongan flag on the sporting map of the world after becoming Olympic silver medalist.

By 1988, a handful of athletes made a trip to Korea to attend the Summer Games, the second Olympian participation by a Tongan squad. In Far East, Siolilo Vao Ikavuka was the first Olympic sportswoman to represent Tonga, a country which was a pioneer in the women's rights when the legendary Queen Salote Tupou III came to power in the first half of the 20th century. It was a milestone in the history of Tonga's sports. Prior to her participation in the women's discus throw in South Korea, where placed in 21st (last), Miss Siolilo defeated many other hopefuls for the chance to become Tonga's first Olympic sportswoman.

Exactly four years on, a handful of national champs were invited to attend the 1992 Summer Olympics on Barcelonese soil, competing in track-and field and weightlifting.

Peae Takaunove Wolfgramm: A National Hero

Without a doubt, the Island's finest hour came during the Atlanta Centennial Games in July 1996 as Tonga became the third nation from Oceania (among 18 independent states and dependencies), behind only Australia and New Zealand, to gain an international status as an Olympic medalist on the global stage upon capturing a boxing medal with Mr. Wolfgramm. No other Tongan had ever won a major medal on the global stage. Tonga sent only five representatives to America, competing in athletics, boxing, and weightlifting.

Wolfgramm came to America promising to compete with Olympic spirit and giving the island something to be proud of itself. He was runner-up to Ukraine's national champ Vladimir Klitchko in men's super heavyweight category in the 1996 Boxing Championship, after beating notable fighters in the first rounds and semis respectively and teaching the world a lesson of Olympic spirit. Aleksei Lezin of Russia and Duncan Dokiwari from Nigeria were bronze medalists in the Global Tournament, respectively. Because of Wolfgramm's single medal, the Anglophone nation was one of the 61st most important Olympic delegations at Atlanta'96, surpassing Mexico, Puerto Rico, and India.

Few days prior t the 1996 Atlanta Games, the Wall Street Journal's sportswriters Roger Thurow and Jonathan Buck wrote an interesting article about Tonga's hope Olympics on Georgian soil and putting Wolfgramm as the nation's main athlete. Following his triumph at Georgia, Wolfgramm was to become a national celebrity by Tonga's people, who had watched only achievements of Fiji's golfer Vijay Singh or when Guam's national delegate, Kimberley Santos, was crowned as the 30th Miss World at London in November 1980.

At the 2000 Australia Games, there were Olympics from Tonga. The national team's September 2000 trip to Sydney was the island's fifth participation in Olympian history. From 2004 to 2008, the English-speaking nation was represented by eighth entries --- almost all were eliminated in the first rounds at 2004 Athens and Beijing 2008.

Tonga will attend the London 2012 Games with a handful of athletes. Because of its poor performance in the pre-Olympic meets, however, most of the island's representatives will be invited by the International Olympic Committee. Ana Po'uhila, a shot put thrower, is the most remarkable athlete, having won two medals (gold and bronze) at the 2011 South Pacific Games on New Caledonia.

London 2012 Olympics: The Kingdom of Tonga - An Olympic Nation in the South Pacific
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Alejandro Guevara Onofre: Within a span of three years, Alejandro has produced a host of high-quality articles/essays about cultures of the world, "re-discovering countries" and exploring exotic locations -from Chad to Vietnam, from Kosovo to the paradise island of Dominica - and new biographies (from such disparate individuals as Halle Berry, José Gamarra Zorrilla...). He also has made a name for himself as an expert on Summer Olympics, becoming the top "Olympian author" at Ezinearticles.com; stories based on athletic perseverance and Olympian spirit in global sports, including the United States of America. Under this backdrop, he has declared himself as "the world's No. 1 fan of the Olympics". As a keen sports fan, he says "I am passionate about sport--writing about it, playing it, watching it, and talking..."

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