BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 22, 2004 — As part of an on-going effort to build a better Iraq, the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, has given financial and engineering support to the renovation of the Iraqi Olympic Weightlifting Team’s training facility.

Throughout Baghdad, brigade commanders have been tasked to identify projects within their operating areas that would benefit from American or nongovernmental agency financial and engineering support.

The Iraqi Olympic Team’s training facilities fall within the “Ready First” Brigade’s purview of the Rusafa and Aadhamiya districts of Baghdad.

“When we first got to the city, the Olympic facilities were in complete disarray. Buildings were destroyed, equipment had been looted and a good portion of the athletes had already left the country,” said Col. Peter R. Mansoor, 1st Brigade Combat Team commander.

According to published reports, Uday Hussein, son of former regime leader Saddam Hussein, decimated Iraq’s Olympic training facilities and programs. Athletes who didn’t win medals were killed, imprisoned or tortured. Many left the country in hopes of competing elsewhere.

“We worked with Ahmed Al-Samori, the head of the interim Iraqi Olympic Committee, and determined that Iraq’s best chance for a medal at Athens, Greece, was the weightlifting team,” Mansoor said. “In order for the team to be competitive, we needed to renovate the facility.”

Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, made the initial assessment of the existing facilities.

After an appraisal of the facility was made, $36,000 was provided by the division under the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, said Staff Sgt. Blanche A. Woffindale, B Company, 489th Civil Affairs Battalion. The project was authorized in February and work began.

Members of the Iraqi weightlifting team said they were pleased with the progress made so far and training hard in the renovated facility.

The athletes are lifting upwards of 30-40 tons a day, said Tiras Odisho, Iraq’s National Olympic Committee director.

Iraq’s highest hope for a medal at Athens rests on the compact, powerhouse shoulders of a lifter known as Muhammad. He has already made the 2004 Olympic Team at a qualifying tournament in Vancouver, Canada earlier this year.

The team travels first to Bulgaria then to Kazakhstan in a series of Olympic qualifying tournaments. Harder, a member of the team, recently set a world record that unfortunately didn’t count. The lift was performed during a training session that was captured on film by a Cable News Network television crew.

During a progress review of the facilities conducted March 16, Harder lifted an impressive 205 kilograms 451 lbs).

“Having been in Iraq for almost a year now, it is very clear that sports has a great future,” said Mansoor.

All colleges in Iraq will begin implementing weightlifting programs at the freshman and sophomore level with the help of donations of 30 sets of weightlifting equipment also being provided by the division.

Plans are currently in the works to start a weightlifting program for the women’s team which may to compete in a series of meets to be held in Qatar in 2006.

“Nothing will make us prouder than to see you march into the stadium in Athens under the Iraqi flag,” Mansoor told the athletes.