Car­la Rauseo

There is a pic­ture cir­cu­lat­ing on Face­book of a fe­male Kenyan elite run­ner giv­ing her bot­tle of wa­ter to a suf­fer­ing and de­hy­drat­ed Chi­nese run­ner with no low­er arms dur­ing an un­named marathon. The cap­tion un­der the pic­ture in­forms us that be­cause of her hu­man­i­tar­i­an ges­ture she lost pre­cious time, fin­ish­ing sec­ond and los­ing the first place prize mon­ey of US$10,000.

Clear­ly, in these kinds of ul­tra sport­ing events, there is more than one kind of race hap­pen­ing. This Kenyan woman cer­tain­ly is a cham­pi­on in the race of life, in the hu­man­i­tar­i­an race. Her self­less feat high­lights pre­cise­ly why such chal­leng­ing sport­ing events are tar­gets for ter­ror­ism, and why the Boston bomb­ings had such a pro­found, deeply re­ver­ber­at­ing ef­fect on all of us around the world.

Sports ter­ror­ism has hap­pened be­fore. I am sure that the Boston bomb­ings re­mind­ed many of us of the Mu­nich Olympics in 1972, where eight Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ists mur­dered 11 Is­raeli ath­letes. But why at the Olympic Games? What bet­ter plat­form than the Olympics; where there is a world­wide au­di­ence; where the games are in­tend­ed for all na­tions to gath­er and com­pete in uni­ty. In fact, this is sym­bol­ised by the Olympic rings, which rep­re­sent the five con­ti­nents from which all ath­letes come to par­tic­i­pate. Par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Olympics is an ho­n­our for every ath­lete, each of whom has his/her own per­son­al sto­ries of strug­gle and beat­ing the odds to ul­ti­mate­ly rep­re­sent his/her coun­try at one of the most pres­ti­gious events in the world. Ter­ror­ism di­rect­ed at this type of event strikes at the very heart of what the Olympics mean. It is its com­plete an­tithe­sis and a di­rect at­tack on every­thing that is good and hu­man­i­tar­i­an.

The Boston Marathon is no dif­fer­ent. For many, run­ning a marathon is more than com­pet­ing and win­ning. Peo­ple un­der­take such feats for many per­son­al rea­sons: from over­com­ing obe­si­ty, to self-bet­ter­ment, to just reach­ing a long-time per­son­al goal. Many run as a way of rais­ing funds for char­i­ties or in or­der to raise aware­ness of cer­tain dis­abil­i­ties. This year's marathon in­clud­ed a fa­ther who ran while push­ing his son, who has cere­bral pal­sy, in a wheel­chair. There was al­so a moth­er who lost her young hus­band to a heart at­tack, and ran the marathon while push­ing her daugh­ter who has a rare dis­or­der and has lived be­yond doc­tors' ex­pec­ta­tions. The hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­pect of such ul­tra sport­ing events is un­mis­tak­able and it trumps the com­pe­ti­tion amongst the elite ath­letes.

The lo­gis­tics of a marathon al­so lend them­selves to ter­ror­ist in­fil­tra­tion. The race has a high-risk pro­file. The course is 26 miles long, and quite im­pos­si­ble to se­cure. The thou­sands of spec­ta­tors make blend­ing in rather easy, and in the ex­cite­ment of cheer­ing on the run­ners, no one no­tices some­one just plac­ing a back­pack on the ground.

The dev­as­ta­tion in Boston was more than loss of life and in­juries. I be­lieve it hurt peo­ple's hearts. From the run­ners to the spec­ta­tors, to the res­i­dents of Boston to the cit­i­zens of the Unit­ed States, to peo­ple the world over, the fact that some­thing so evil would be done to such a pres­ti­gious and mean­ing­ful event cre­ates feel­ings of pain and hurt that are miles deep­er than phys­i­cal in­juries. This is prob­a­bly just what the ter­ror­ists want­ed and what made the at­tack so suc­cess­ful for them.

Such acts of ter­ror may have long-stand­ing ef­fects on sport­ing events, as did 9/11 on air trav­el. The in­creased se­cu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures may make it very in­con­ve­nient and un­pleas­ant for many, and serve as a con­stant re­minder of the po­ten­tial evil lurk­ing at even the most non-threat­en­ing, peace­ful ac­tiv­i­ties.

How­ev­er, in the same breath, sport can be used as a ve­hi­cle for re­cov­ery. The Red Sox game that had to be can­celled be­cause of the lock­down was an av­enue through which the pub­lic could show sup­port for the vic­tims, could make a stand against ter­ror­ism and re­new their ded­i­ca­tion to each oth­er, to the city of Boston and to the coun­try. Fur­ther­more, by con­tin­u­ing with events such as the Celtics, Red Sox and Bru­ins games, sports helped to bring some sense of nor­mal­cy back to Boston. In ad­di­tion, the Red Sox as a team had the means and abil­i­ty to raise large sums of mon­ey (I am sure) for the vic­tims by auc­tion­ing off their uni­form shirts made spe­cial­ly for the oc­ca­sion.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, these bomb­ings are cer­tain­ly not the last of ter­ror­ist at­tacks on sport­ing events. How­ev­er, de­spite the hav­oc they wreaked, no ter­ror­ist will ever con­quer the hu­man spir­it. While sport­ing events may be a tar­get for ter­ror­ists, iron­i­cal­ly, they are al­so an av­enue for re­bel­lion against them. Thir­ty-sev­en thou­sand run­ners at the Lon­don Marathon this year is ev­i­dence that the hu­man spir­it will not be ter­rorised!

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