Shivering East Timorese secure warm welcome

Shivering East Timorese secure warm welcome

SYDNEY (Reuters): East Timor's tiny team of athletes may
huddle over their radiators on chilly spring nights, but their
reception at the Olympics could not be warmer.

Just existing is an achievement. Being here is a triumph for a
quartet who lost all their belongings and training equipment in
the conflict that ravaged their homeland and left it in ruins.

The athletes -- two marathon runners, a boxer and a
weightlifter -- will have a place of honor in Friday's opening
ceremony. They will enter the stadium just ahead of the
Australian host team.

One year after their country voted to end more than 23 years
of Indonesian rule, this is a richly symbolic moment to savor.

Team leader Frank Fowlie will be a proud man when the team
steps into the stadium.

"It's one way of declaring a form of nationhood. Taking your
place among the other 199 nations," he said.

For the athletes are trying to put behind them the nightmares
of the past.

"I was scared to death because the militia was looking for me.
My name was on the list of people to be killed. We had no choice
but to flee into the mountains," boxer Victor Ramos, recalling
the upheaval that nearly cost him his life, told CNN TV station.

"They came looking for me and when they couldn't find me, they
killed my friend instead," he added.

In the Sydney athletes village, the East Timorese team
crouched over heaters trying to keep warm. Olympic chief Juan
Antonio Samaranch, a great believer in the political healing
powers of sport, gave them a warm welcome.

"The first night was a shock. It was the coldest the athletes
have felt. But they are enjoying it, especially all the food,"
team leader Fowlie said.

Boxer Ramos, weightlifter Martinho de Araujo and marathon
runners Calisto Da Costa and Aguida Amaral have been racing
against time to get fit for the greatest sporting challenge of
their lives against a background of conflict and hardship.

They arrived in poor health and desperately short of training
when Australia's Institute of Sport stepped in to help them.

Back home, the marathon runners had trained barefoot and the
weighlifters used tree branches to practice with.

Now they are all doing personal bests and the institute admits
it ran out of time trying to improve them even further.