Tunisian Wrestlers Write a Geography of Perseverance in Cairo
At the African Competition, Our Young Wrestlers Have Achieved More Than a Harvest of Metal: They Have Mapped a Geography of Perseverance
Five medals, including four gold medals, won by a team of just six athletes. An absolute ratio of insolence, surgical efficiency that leaves rival nations in the dust.
The four young women who won gold are the new pillars of a Tunisia that is winning, one that doesn't bother with frills. On the mat, away from cameras and lucrative advertising contracts, these young women have elevated courage to a system. Whether at -53 kg or -59 kg, it's the weight of history they've lifted. Coming second in the team ranking with a delegation as small as theirs is pure alchemy: transforming the rarity of resources into a hegemony of will.
However, behind the glitter of the podiums and the laconic communiqués from the ministry, lies a harsher truth. This "positive dynamic" touted with satisfaction is the tree that hides a forest of neglects. Wrestling and boxing, like many other "minor" disciplines, often exist in the eyes of decision-makers only for the time it takes for a photographer's flash. These athletes are the goldsmiths of a solitary success, the artisans of muscle who train in the shadow of a football that devours budgets with an appetite inversely proportional to its international results. A football that doesn't even offer a spectacle, so dull is our championship.
It's time, imperatively time, to repair this structural injustice. Let's acknowledge that while we're pouring money into the wounds of our crisis-stricken collective sports, it's these "small" individual sports that, with an economy of means that borders on asceticism, bring prestige back to the homeland. Watching over these talents is no longer an option, it's a duty of recognition. If the gold of our lionesses shines so brightly, it's also because it was forged in the fire of an unjust scarcity. Let's stop celebrating these miracles as if they were natural!
