Pepperdine student athelete Sarah Attar will compete as the 800-meter runner in the 2012 London Olympics as one of Saudi Arabia’s first women entrants.
On Thursday, the International Olympics Committee (I.O.C.) announced Saudi Arabia would send two female athletes to the Olympics for the first time: Attar, the 800-meter race, and Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani, for judo.
The news was a landmark in Olympic history as now every competing country will send a female athlete.
Attar, 19, was raised and trained in California and holds dual citizenship. Pepperdine Sports writes she is a Pepperdine Scholar-Athlete and has ran track and cross-country for the past two years.
A New York Times article, which dubbed Attar a trailblazer, writes that she ran the 1,500 meters in five minutes 30.51 seconds and the 3,000 in 11:37.41, below Olympic standard times but accepted under a clauses “with the aim of broadening Olympic participation.”
In a video provided by the I.O.C., Attar said a big inspiration is being one of the first women for Saudi Arabia to compete and hopes to “make some big strides for women over there to get more involved in sport.”
Attar and Shahrkhani cross the threshold of female equity into the Olympic Games as they join Brunei and Qatar as the last countries to enter women into the Games.
The excitement followed July reports of the Muslim kingdom reversing a promise to allow Saudi women athletes to compete for the first time in Olympic history because one had not qualified.
In July the Associated Press (A.P.) reported that Saudi leaders were under pressure from both human-rights groups and the I.O.C. to ensure a female team.
Shortly after, I.O.C. President Jacques Rogge released a statement to the A.P. saying he was confident in continued discussions with the Saudi National Olympic Committee.
“Women have the right to practice sport and they want to practice,” Rogge said in the same press video as Attar this week. “We must make sure that barriers are broken down. We had a good dialogue with [Saudi Olympic officials] and then we were able to persuade them to send women to the games.”
Rogge called the decision a “symbolic one,” and the I.O.C. believes “that within a decade or 20 years, there will be a gender equality at the Olympic games.”
The I.O.C. website writes that the 1908 London Games held a 1.8 percent female participation rate and a 9.5 percent in London 1948. In 2008, Beijing had more than 42 percent female participation.
