Winzar Kakiouea Is a One-Man Team From Nauru. His Olympics Might be Over in 10 Seconds.
As his nation’s lone athlete at the Paris Olympics, Winzar Kakiouea carries an additional burden: Most people have no idea that his country is a country.
Also, his homeland could one day disappear into the ocean.
First, a brief geography primer: Nauru, with a population of less than 13,000, is an island nation perched in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Once known as Pleasant Island, Nauru (pronounced NO-roo, not Nah-oo-roo) gained its independence in 1968, after a period of trusteeship by the United Nations. Its economy for decades depended on guano, or bird poop, a key ingredient in fertilizer. Mining destroyed parts of the island; chunks of Nauru slid into the sea. Climate change is nibbling at its shores, too.
“Most people don’t know about Nauru,” Kakiouea said. “When I tell them about it, they are shocked that this little, tiny place is a country.”
On Saturday, Kakiouea, 23, will compete in the preliminaries of the men’s 100 meters. He is very fast — the fastest man in the expanse of the Pacific known as Micronesia — but it is probably safe to say that his Olympics will be over in fewer than 11 seconds.
Still, Kakiouea’s presence in Paris is testament to one of the Olympics’ most charming features. During the Games’ parade of nations, smaller countries stand on equal footing with larger ones. China, Cape Verde, Canada, Curaçao and the Cook Islands cohabitate among the Cs. Both American Samoa and the United States of America get their due.
Kakiouea served as Nauru’s flag-bearer, and he was accompanied on the rainy ride down the Seine by his coach and two team officials.
“We were next to Nepal,” said Sheba Hubert, the chef de mission of the Nauru Olympic Committee. “And another country. I can’t remember which one.”
The country was Namibia.
There are four athletes in these Games who are their nations’ only athletes: Belize, Liechtenstein, Somalia and Nauru. Liechtenstein’s Romano Puentener raced in men’s cross-country cycling and Somalia’s Ali Idow Hassan is running in the men’s 800.
“I feel a little lonely, but I am proud of representing Somalia,” Hassan said.
Both Belize’s Shaun Gill and Kakiouea are competing in the 100 meters courtesy of an Olympic universality rule that reserves spots for athletes from underrepresented nations.
It wasn’t until June at the Micronesian Games, when Kakiouea won gold in the 100, 200 and the 4×100 relay, that he considered the possibility of an Olympic run. Nauru has no proper track, only what Kakiouea refers to as a “dirt oval.”
Besides, his racing career only began three years ago.
Today, Kakiouea, who fixes telecom cables for a living, shares the national record in the 100-meter dash. He has won a national power lifting competition. And he is, in his country, a heralded Australian Rules Football player.
“It’s not so impressive,” Kakiouea said of his accomplishments. “Nauru is very small.”
It takes 25 minutes to circumnavigate Nauru by car, and it is by size the world’s third-smallest nation, after Vatican City and Monaco. Its smallness — most everyone knows each other, or at least a cousin or two — compelled Kakiouea to hide his training regimen, lest people gossip about his ambitions. He stayed away from the dirt oval and went instead into the forested hills, where he shared an earthen straightaway with the occasional car. He had no coach, but a cousin came often to time him.
To fortify his body, he ate crab and noddy, a kind of tropical seabird. He fished and sliced the flesh into sashimi slabs.
“No salt, just raw,” he said. “It’s my favorite.”
Earlier this year, after Kakiouea participated at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow, an Australian track coach messaged him on Instagram and offered his help. Within three months, Kakiouea’s time in the 100 had improved to 10.82 seconds from 11.04. The world record, set by Jamaica’s Usain Bolt in 2009, is 9.58.
“I like the 100 meters because it is short,” Kakiouea said.
The first Nauruan to compete in the Olympics was a weight lifter, Marcus Stephen. But in 1992 Nauru had no Olympic committee or any other Olympic infrastructure. Instead, Stephen competed for Samoa and finished ninth in the featherweight category. He later became president of Nauru and, like other Pacific island leaders, warned of how rising seas could imperil their nations’ survival. Stephen is now the head of the Nauru National Olympic Committee. The country’s first Olympic team was formed in 1996.
No Nauruan — the only nationality that is a palindrome — has ever won an Olympic medal. Even the International Olympic Committee seems confused about Nauru’s sporting profile: Its summary of the country’s Olympic presence in Paris highlights a women’s weight lifter who is not here.
None of this national anonymity has stopped Kakiouea from enjoying the Olympics. He has traded pins with Serena Williams and taken photographs with Sha’Carri Richardson, the reigning world champion in the women’s 100. He has relished the offerings at the Olympic Village, where most athletes are staying.
“That round bread is really good,” he said of the baguette. “I heard it’s a local food.”
During training sessions in the days leading to his 100-meter heat, Kakiouea mixed with a panoply of athletes. Brazilian race walkers wiggled past in the inner lanes. A Bahamian hurdler counted out steps.
In the section reserved for the sprint specialists, a Singaporean athlete strode in, accompanied by a crisply attired training squad. A runner from San Marino adjusted a set of racing blocks. A sprinter from the Federated States of Micronesia, whom Kakiouea had beaten at the Micronesian Games, nodded at him, a moment of Micronesian solidarity.
Amid the scrum, Kakiouea set up his towel close to the Jamaicans, as close to track royalty as any nationality can get. He looked as if he was meditating, visualizing each second of what he hopes will be a sub-11 second Olympic race. But, really, he said, he was eager for any scrap of training advice the Jamaicans might dispense.
“I thought my training now is really intense,” Kakiouea said. “But when I see the Jamaicans, I realize they are next level, and I want to learn from them.”
Before his turn on the track — a handful of starts each day, followed by the kind of physiotherapy he had never before enjoyed — he cranked up some Christian gospel music in his headphones. He laced up his pink running shoes, Nike spikes that cost him exactly 240 Australian dollars, he said, just over $150.
He has no endorsements. No coach was with him.
He tried to time himself with his watch, but it was an exercise in elastic island time when he needed millisecond accuracy.
“It’s OK,” he said of Saturday. “I’ll run as fast as I can for Nauru.”
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