El Moutawakel, Nawal (1962—)

Moroccan runner. Name variations: Moutawakil. Born in Casablanca on April 15, 1962; married; children: two.

Convinced she would come in last, Nawal el Moutawakel, a converted sprinter, beat out Judi Brown (b. 1961) of the United States and Christina Cojocaru of Rumania in the women's first-ever 400-meter hurdles in Los Angeles in 1984, setting an Olympic record of 54.61. El Moutawakel was the first Moroccan, the first African woman, and the first Islamic woman to ever win a gold medal. There was rejoicing in the streets of Casablanca.

"It is very hard for Arab women to do sports," said el Moutawakel; they are discouraged from competing. Her father, who believed that she would be a champion some day, had to accompany her whenever she trained as it would have gone against Islamic tradition for her to be alone.

By winning African and Arab meets as a teenager, el Moutawakel had attracted the attention of the international track-and-field community and had been offered a scholarship to study in America at Iowa State. At Iowa, she was captain of her team and won the national collegiate championship in 1984. But two events spanning her freshman and sophomore years would send her back to Casablanca, shaken. The first was her father's death soon after her arrival. The second was a plane crash that killed all of her college teammates; el Moutawakel would have been on the plane as well had her coach not insisted she remain behind to study.

Deciding to try one last competition before retiring, she set her sights on the Los Angeles Olympics. During the race, the image of her father spurred her on in the last few hurdles, and upon winning she sobbed into the Moroccan flag. El Moutawakel continues to live in Casablanca, where she is director of a new training center for female athletes and coaches the Moroccan Olympic track team. She also writes for Morocco's La Gazette du Sport.