Iraqi boxer keeps eye on Olympics, killers
Saturday, August 25, 2007
SULEIMANIYA, Iraq - When Ali Khalil leaves his Baghdad home each day and heads to the gym, he pauses to look both ways like a child who has been told to be careful crossing the street.
The truth is, this lumbering 31-year-old heavyweight fighter with the Iraqi national team fears for his life. Already one brother has been murdered and tossed into the river. Another was kidnapped and driven around for two days in the trunk of a car through the streets of Baghdad, but finally released.
"Am I next?" he asks. "I never know. I have to be careful."
Knowing he is a target for insurgents who have been capturing and killing Olympians, Ali tries to stay focused on his goal: Making it to the Beijing Olympics, following in the footsteps of his brother, Ishmael, who battled the storied American heavyweight Evander Holyfield in 1984 in Los Angeles.
That Ishmael Khalil lost when the referee stopped the fight doesn't dampen Ali's regard for the achievement.
"He made it to the Olympics," said Ali. "And I am proud of that."
Ali is the youngest of six boys and five girls. He started boxing when he was 12 or 13. Ishmael was his first teacher. "He taught me a few moves and, of course, I was inspired by him."
Iraq's greatest hope is for a boxing medal.
He yearns to finish what his older brother started.
"I want to do that for my family. They're proud of me, and I want to make them proud," he told me this week at an outdoor cafe in Suleimaniya.
Ali couldn't believe he was sitting so carefree in a public place late at night. The city was so alive all around him. Taxis rushed by. Couples walked arm in arm. Kids chased one another in the street, even at this late hour. He had walked from his hotel with his coach and fellow boxers, the elite of the national boxing team.
"If this were Baghdad," Ali said, "we'd be at home. It's not safe to go out."
Especially where Ali lives, because the tiny house he shares with two sisters and a brother is in the "hot zone," or the fortressed compound of Baghdad that's under constant mortar attack.
"I feel good here," he said, pointing out the two weeks of training in Suleimaniya was "like a holiday."
Yet Ali is working hard to get in shape for the Pan-Arab Games in Cairo in November. Ali has won gold there in the past.
The others on this team -- the elite of Iraq -- defer to him. He's the senior member. He's the one the country is placing its hopes on winning gold, and to be the first Iraqi to win a medal at the Olympics.
Earlier that evening, he was working the "pads" with Josh Canty, the Windsor trainer who was enlisted to put this Iraqi team in shape.
Canty said he was throwing "bombs" at the pads, with pinpoint accuracy.
"If he ever missed, I'd be on my ass on the ground," said the owner of Windsor's Border City Boxing Club.
And the night before in the ring, he was throwing with such ferocity and disdain that he cut a super heavyweight above the right eye and sent him home.
Hulking heavyweight
The next victim stepped in, and the heavy lumbering Ali moved in for the kill and decimated that boxer too. When he stepped through the ropes, Ali felt good, and a smile broke across his face. He knew he had done well. He pushed through the swarm of admiring neighbourhood kids to an open area in the yard to skip and cool down.
Ali is a hulking heavyweight. He weighed in the other night at 91 kg. He lined up at a bathroom scale that was set up outside the outdoor ring, and stripped to his jockeys. It was like a giant standing on a postage stamp.
"I want to be a hero," he said, but with modesty, because by hero he means achieving what no other Iraqi has achieved.
"I want the gold," Ali said. "I want to go to China and come back with the gold. It will be my last time to go there. After that I want to go to the U.S. or Canada and fight as a professional."
Behind Ali is a troubled past. He was raised by a very poor family in Baghdad. Like his father, he, too, works as a blacksmith. He has lived all his life in a city marked by violence, assassinations and kidnappings.
His brother, Ibrahim, was killed in 2005. Ali said the family was never told how it was done, except that he learned of it only after his body was found floating in the river.
Ishmael's life was spared because the terrorists discovered he was among the elite boxers in the country, and they set him free.
That was then. Today, sports figures are being targeted, and while Ali himself is a champion, he is the perfect choice for the terrorists. Two other members of his Iraqi team have already been assassinated.
"I knew them well. We worked out together. We were friends. I don't know if they (the terrorists) will come after me.
"I'm ready for them," he said.
More Iraq Articles from Marty Gervais:
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