Nezha Bidouane on CAA web site...

NEZHA BIDOUANE, Morocco

NEZHA Bidouane is a Moroccan athlete specialist of 400 m hurdles, born on 18^th September 1969 in Rabat, Morocco. She was world champion in 1997 and in 2001.

 As most of the children of the Yacoub El Mansour popular neighbourhood in Rabat, NEZHA has been fascinated by the practice of sports in this location of the capital's stars. Belonging to a modest family, Nezha Bidouane had the same dream and was ready to sacrifice everything to become one day a celebrity. Her agility and natural flexibility will help the young girl, determined as she was and always smiling, to attract the attention of coaches of a gymnastics school she will join later with the help and support of Hajja Fatima her mother.

 

But fate will decide otherwise in 1986, since her high school colleagues will attract her toward a test of exploration in Prince Moulay Abdallah sports complex in Rabat for tests in order to be hired as a young promising athlete. That way, the same girls including Miss Mounkabi Bouchra will also bring her with them to sign an athlete's license at the Moroccan Olympic club which she never left.

 

Dominating all the national competitions, she joined in 1991 the National Institute of athletics headed at the time by Akka Lahcen Samsam, general director and technical director of the Federation and Aziz Daouda, technical director of the school. She will be entrusted to Sindaoui Mohamed as coach, and she will in fact be her second coach after Said Belamgharia who had guided her first steps within the pilot athletic school of the Prince Moulay Abdallah sports complex in Rabat, created and supervised by Fatima Elfaquir, first African champion woman of Morocco on 400 m hurdles.

 

This way, Nezha will start a career that will gradually become more professional. After her first titles in junior and her first national and Arab records in this event, on recommendation of Sahere Abdelaziz who will become her husband, Nezha will join Aziz Daouda as coach and specialize definitively on 400m hurdles. She left him upon Abderrahmane Medkouri's advice in early 1993 to join Nawal El Moutawakel in Casablanca, but this break lasted only a few months and Nezha quickly came back to Rabat to meet the man who will train her till the end of her career.

After multiple titles on the Mediterranean, Arabic and African level and some three years in the international circuit and after a first surgery on the Achilles heel, Nezha will win her first world title in Athens where she wins the gold medal of 400 m hurdles in the 1997 world championships.

At the athletics World Cup in 1998 in Johannesburg, she was at a few cents from the world record of 400 m hurdles with a stopwatch of 52 seconds 90/100, establishing a new record of this competition though having run on the 8th lane. In 1999 in Seville, she is prevented the world title to the benefit of the Cuban Daimi Pernia. Sharing the finish photograph with her rival, Nezha is still convinced to be the first, comforted by an image of finish photo on left that she keeps preciously, so the reserves presented by the Moroccan delegation being unable to  change things.

 

In the 2000 Olympic Games of Sidney, though she holds the first world performance, she ends third, disabled in the final minute by a health problem. It is only a postponed part since in 2001 at Edmonton, Nezha will put everybody to agree by winning again the world title confirming that she was the best specialist of the test from 1997 to 2001 since after this second title she decides to end her career and to give birth on August 16 to her who will be her first yacine whose surname will be given by his Majesty Mohamed VI, king of Morocco. On 17^th September 2007, Nezha will give birth to her second child for whom His Majesty will choose Yacir as her name.

 

Nezha has much contributed to the test of 400 meters hurdles in terms of technics because she was considered one of the best technician of this subject, as well as she has contributed on the tactical plan to have been the one who has the best managed the distribution of the effort on all the distance. A real case.

In September 2007, the British newspaper "The Times" classifies her among the best 100 athletes of the World Championships. In April 2008 she is selected among the best athletes in history in Africa and receives from the hands of Mr. Hamad Malboum Kalkaba a prestigious trophy during the first evening gala of the kind on the African continent appearing this way on the Hall of fame continental.

 

 

RECORD MEDAL

NEZHA BIDOUANE

MAR

1997 1999 2000 2001

OR / GOLD SILVER BRONZE OR / GOLD

400m Hurdles 400m Hurldes 400m Hurdles 400m Hurdles

CM / WC CM / WC JO / OG CM / WC

ATHENES SEVILLE SYDNEY EDMONTON