History maker
A Morrocan Olympian changed the thinking about who can be an athlete
When the Olympic Games begin in Paris in July, as many female athletes as male will be competing for medals. The path towards parity was blazed in part by a Moroccan hurdler in the space of 54.61 seconds.
Nawal El Moutawakel was 22 years old when she competed in the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. The women’s 400-metre hurdles was a new Olympic event. The native of Casablanca had won some regional competitions, but she wasn’t the favourite for Olympic gold. Hurdles were considered a sport for tall people; El Moutawakel stood only 160 centimetres. She had taken up hurdles just three years before the Olympics; she was a 100m and 200m sprinter before that. No Arab or African woman had ever won an Olympic medal. She was the only woman on the Moroccan team.
In the final, El Moutawakel led from start to finish. The race was televised live in Morocco, but because of the eight-hour time difference between California and Casablanca, her gold-medal win occurred in the middle of the night. Yet as she ran a victory lap carrying the Moroccan flag, residents flooded the streets of her home city to celebrate. King Hassan II asked the parents of girls born on August 8, the date of El Moutawakel’s triumph, to name their daughters Nawal.
El Moutawakel went on to coach and then serve on many sporting federations and committees, including the International Olympic Committee executive board. She was also Morocco’s Minister of Youth and Sports.
El Moutawakel notes the progress women have made in sports and the achievement of equal numbers of men and women competing in Paris. “To be sure,” she writes for the IOC, “multiple other challenges remain. Success is not easily achieved. It takes time, effort, courage and tenacity. Now, we need to make sure that the positive steps towards true gender equality at Paris 2024 translate into lasting change.”—Catherine Mazy
Photo: Kishimoto / International Olympic Committee
