Athletics: Glory Alozie relishes her glint of gold

Glory Alozie had a glint of gold on the wedding finger of her left hand and a smile to match it.

"Yes, I am married now," she said, fresh from another encouraging step along the road to Athens - fourth place in the 100m hurdles in the IAAF Golden League meeting in the Stade de France.

"I'm married to a Nigerian, Mr Phyne Bouy Macaulay." The pronunciation was "Fine Boy".

"Life is good ... What happened in Sydney is in the past." Not that the diminutive bundle of inspiration will ever forget her heartbreaking experience at the 2000 Olympics.

Alozie travelled there with her former fiance, Hyginus Anugo, a fellow member of the Nigerian track-and-field squad. She was favourite for the women's high hurdles; he was a contender for a place in Nigeria's 4 x 400m relay team.

The couple were from the same village, near Lagos, and from the same tribe, the Ibo. They had moved to Valencia in 1997 to train together for the Sydney Games. They were to have been married in January 2001.

They might still have done so had Anugo left Australia, as he had initially planned, after failing to make the final cut for the relay team.

But not wishing to miss his fiancee's big shot at Olympic glory Anugo headed to Sydney. A devout Christian, like Alozie, he was returning from evening prayers eight days before the opening ceremony when he was hit by a car and killed.

Alozie, in Japan for a final test, was told her fiance had been badly injured by a car but not that he had been killed. The tragic news was broken by her team-mates when she arrived at Sydney.

For four days Alozie was inconsolable in her room in the Olympic Village. She couldn't eat. She couldn't sleep. She wanted to go back to Spain.

Ultimately, the words of Damishi Sango, Nigeria's Minister for Sport, persuaded her to stay and compete. "Go and win the gold medal for Hyginus," he told her. "It is what he would have wanted."

In the final, two weeks later, Alozie had the gold in her sights until the last of the 10 hurdles. Then she was overtaken by Olga Shishigina of Kazakhstan and finished in the silver-medal position.

It was a truly staggering achievement. Alozie had become so frail from loss of appetite she had been spoon-fed by her Spanish coach, Rafael Blanque. She had lost nearly 6kg. From somewhere, the 154cm African summoned the strength to come within 0.03 of a second of Olympic gold.

Not that the ordeal was over. Anugo's body was still in Sydney, three weeks after his death.

The Nigerian Olympic Committee had refused to repatriate it, on the grounds that he had not been an official member of the Nigerian Olympic team. Their stance left a lasting mark on Alozie, long after she returned home with the body.

Two years later she transferred her international allegiance from Nigeria to Spain.

It was a far-from-happy separation. The Nigerian athletics federation withheld her registration papers even when she won the 60m hurdles, representing Spain, at the European Indoor Championships in Vienna in February 2002.

Her victory was later annulled, though she won the European outdoor title in Munich six months later.

Fittingly, she was also conferred with a title by the Ibo, despite the controversy of her switch to Spain. They made her a chieftain, with the name "Ugwu Efiegemba" - "Pride of the People".

And so, four years on from her Sydney nightmare, the pride of the Ibo, and of Valencia, is preparing to return to the Olympic stage in the red-and-yellow colours of her adopted homeland.

Perdita Felicien of Canada and Gail Devers of the US will start as favourites for the 100m hurdles, but at Gateshead last month Alozie set a Spanish record of 12.57s. It was her fastest time since the month before the Sydney Olympics.

Not that Alozie wants to look back just now. "Life has to go on. I have to look forward to the coming Olympics."

- INDEPENDENT