The noise is the first thing everyone mentions. They can hear the hubbub as they wait for their race to be called, and it builds as they walk through the warren of corridors, towards the little square of light that may as well be a threshold between the here and the hereafter...But they are all Olympians. And all of them have a story to tell.
Like Filomenaleonisa Iakopo, the 18-year-old from American Samoa who runs a national record of 12.78sec in heat two. A little cluster of volcanic islands and atolls in the south Pacific, the 77 generously-forested square miles of American Samoa do not currently possess a running track. We have no training facilities, Iakopo explains. I train on the sand, I train on the grass, I train on hills.
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