TROUBLED LAND, TALENTED TEAM : IMPOVERISHED, WAR-TORN BURUNDI HAS WEALTH OF RUNNERS.

Byline: Andrew Maykuth Philadelphia Inquirer 

Prince Louis Rwagasore Stadium hardly seems the setting of Olympic champions.

There is a hole in the roof. The track is made of loose gravel. And the harsh Central African sun has made the grass in the soccer field as coarse as a wire brush.

There is no fancy Nautilus equipment here. The athletes lift barbells made from steel pipes set into coffee cans filled with concrete. Coaches teach the hammer throw using homemade burlap bags stuffed with rocks and sand.

There's also the small matter of security.

The country's star 1,500-meter runner, Venuste Niyongabo, stopped training in Bujumbura three months ago because he feared he might become another victim of the ethnic violence that has killed more than 100,000 people here since 1993. Niyongabo now trains in Italy.

Despite the difficulties of being a small country locked in a brutish civil war, Burundi is assembling its first Olympic team ever. It is no Jamaican bobsledding team, either: Several Burundian middle-distance runners could be contenders for medals in Atlanta.

``Some people say Burundians only know how to kill,'' said Jean Patrick Nduwimana, 18, an 800-meter runner who hopes to qualify for the Olympic team. ``We want to show the world we know how to do good things, too.''

The International Olympic Committee is paying the costs of sending six Burundian athletes and two coaches to Atlanta.

The coach of the Burundian team, Adolphe Rukenkanya, 41, said the government decided to chip in $35,000 from its war-depleted budget to pay for additional athletes and coaches because it hopes the team will unify this divided nation.

``We're hoping that people will be looking at them as Burundians,'' Rukenkanya said. ``We hope that, when they win, people will say: `I'm happy for my country' and not `I'm happy for my ethnic group.' ''

Rukenkanya described the Burundian Olympic team as a peaceful island amid a sea of ethnic hatred.

``If you are applying for a job or something, it is important that you are from the same ethnic group,'' he said. ``That is a fact in Burundi now. But it's not so in sports.''

Rukenkanya said he is not even sure how many team members are Hutus or Tutsis.

In truth, ethnic differences underlie almost all social interaction in Burundi.

And there is only so far that the power of sport can go to heal a country that American officials have said is committing ``national suicide.''

The fact of the matter is that almost everybody on the team belongs to the Tutsi clan, which makes up only 14 percent of the population, yet dominates Burundi's social and economic elite.

``Personally, I'm not interested in the Olympics, because they only have one ethnic group on that team,'' said Emmanuel Munezero, a journalist who is a member of the Hutu-dominated Frodebu party. ``Those who have the opportunity to win are all Tutsis.''

Tutsis might argue that they are physically better suited to running sports; Tutsis tend to be long-legged and lean, while Hutus generally are stockier. (Some Burundians, in an effort to avoid ever uttering the words ``Tutsi'' or ``Hutu,'' refer to the groups only as the ``tall people'' or the ``short people.'')

But Hutus say their clan is underrepresented on the Olympic team for the same reason that there are few Hutus in any elevated social position: They have been systematically excluded by the Tutsis.

The two primary sources of athletes in the country are schools and the military, institutions where few Hutus are admitted. There are no longer any Hutus whatsoever at the ethnically pure University of Burundi after Tutsi gangs massacred about 20 Hutu students.

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PHOTO Amidst civil war and poverty, the African nation of B urundi has built a small but world-class track team.

Andrew Maykuth / Philadelphia Inquirer