Her efforts have been rewarded with a ticket to Beijing, courtesy of one of five "wild card" entries given to Iraq by the International Olympic Committee, saving her the trouble of direct qualification.

Iraqi sprinter Dana Abdul-Razzaq (L) exercises with her fiance during a training session al-Shaab National Stadium in Baghdad March 18, 2008. Abdul-Razzaq will be Iraq's only female athlete at the Beijing Olympics. [Agencies] Related readings: Young Afghan woman runs toward Olympics despite jeers

She will compete in the 100 metres and 200 metres events, a dream come true after only taking up running six years ago when she was in secondary school. She has since won more than a dozen medals at Arab and west Asian competitions.

"I am very happy because I feel that the fruit of all my hard work is the Olympics," she said.

MODEST

Last year, the Iraqi Olympic Committee said 104 athletes, coaches, administrators and referees had been killed since 2003. The number of missing Olympic officials stood at 22, including the then head of the Olympic Committee who was kidnapped with several others in July 2006. Their fate is still unknown.

Iraq's Olympics contingent has not yet been finalised but the field and track union are sending Abdul-Razzaq and another athlete after receiving two wild cards.

Abdul-Razzaq trains twice a day, six days a week, each session lasting three or four hours. The facilities are basic, to say the least.

Dressed modestly in a black-and-white tracksuit, she begins each session with stretches and limbers up with a light jog under the watchful eye of coach Abdul-Rahman.

Water seeps over the edge of the running track at the pre-Saddam Hussein Shaab stadium as her fiance -- who asked not to be identified -- runs by her side. Bare flagpoles and cracked concrete stands ring the field as other would-be Olympians do sprint training.

"It is the only stadium that is suitable for practising, it is better than nothing," said Abdul-Razzaq.

Facilities at the Jadriya field are even worse, the surface ruined by U.S. Humvee military vehicles during the invasion.

Abdul-Razzaq will go to Beijing with nothing like the support other athletes receive from their legion of doctors, nutritionists, masseuses and other specialists provided by national sporting federations.

"I'm supposed to have a masseuse, I suffer from muscle spasms every day," she said.

"I should have a doctor do a specific nutrition programme. I feel dizzy right now because my training is so hard and I do not follow a specific diet."

There are no gyms made available to her by Iraqi athletic authorities, so she often pays her own way into public gyms for the strength training she needs.

"From all sides, I am restricted," she says.