Gretta Taslakian

Lebanon

The 26-year-old sprinter is heading to her third Olympics, knowing that “it’s time for me to step up to a higher level.”

In Beijing four years ago, Taslakian ran her fastest time of the season in the 200m heats, but still failed to make the final. “My last Olympics was kind of bad, because I moved to the States for training camp and I got injured twice so I stopped training,” she says. She only qualified for those games because she’s the top female sprinter in Lebanon – she hadn’t actually matched the Olympic qualification time. This year, she says, she’s close to it. “It’s all going as planned.”

Taslakian’s biggest challenge is a lack of regular competition. “The fact is, I live in a country where track and field isn’t really big,” she says. “In the U.S. or Jamaica, they’re competing from, like, four years old. We don’t have enough athletes. I always train alone, which is difficult. But I’m always positive, because I know that, if I’m not, I can’t reach where I want to be.”

With her achievements measured in fractions of seconds, Taslakian describes sprinting as a “cruel sport.” “You train so long and so hard just for 11 seconds, or 24 seconds,” she says. “It’s difficult to understand for outsiders. People will say, ‘You run the whole year? Just for 11 seconds? Can’t you just run next to your house?’ It’s not easy.”

And Taslakian says the moments that make all that effort worthwhile – when she’s running well – pass in an instant. Unlike other sportsmen, who often describe time slowing down when they’re in the zone, for sprinters, Taslakian says, it’s the opposite. “When I run well, I can’t even remember the race. It seems like it’s over in two seconds; I don’t know how I got to the finish line. But when I run badly, I can feel every step, hear individuals in the crowd, feel every movement in my body. It’s really frustrating.”

The year after Beijing, Taslakian injured her anterior cruciate ligament. It was partly a result of the poor training facilities she has to deal with in Lebanon. As part of her warm-up, Taslakian was doing short sprints, then hopping. Unfortunately, she didn’t notice that the lane she’d chosen had a hole in it. “I didn’t really pay attention,” she says. “You kind of expect the track to be flat.” She landed, heard a pop, and that was that. Season over.

After surgery, Taslakian “refused” any physiotherapy or treatment. “I just took two or three months off.” She started to try and compete again. “I was always in pain, but I wanted to go.” The doctor finally persuaded her that she needed to wait longer before making a comeback or she could do some serious damage. “So then I just took off. I wanted to be away from everything.”

She visited her friend, Olympic and World Champion Shelly-Ann Fraser, in Jamaica and got the first of her three tattoos (a stars-and-flowers design on her stomach that “meant nothing, I just wanted a tattoo”), the most painful of which, she says, was the one of the mythological winged horse, Pegasus, on her neck. “I might not be as fast,” she says, “but I thought it was so me.”

The break did her good. A few months after her return, she broke the national indoor record for 60m twice in a matter of days. “I’d recharged myself.”

Taslakian says she’s “optimistic” about her chances of making it through the heats in London. “I have to be. I believe that, once you’re there, anything can happen. But, being realistic, it’s not going to be easy for me, coming from nowhere, to make the final. It’s more than tough.”

NEXT: Ahmed Khalil