Porter Keeps Olympic Dream Alive

“It’s been my dream to compete at the Olympic Games for as long as I can remember,” Tiffany Porter Ofili says as she gazes at a photograph of herself as a young girl.

“I was 13 when this picture was taken and that’s me back in Ypsilanti (a small town in Michigan). I had my Olympic dream long before that. When I was much younger I remember watching it on TV and turning to my father and saying: ‘Dad, I want to run in the Olympics one day.’

“The point I was trying to make was that I am very much American. I am very much British. I am very much Nigerian. I am extremely proud to be all three. I’m not apologising for that. It’s who I am. I embrace it. It’s very important to be true to myself.”

Porter’s father, Felix Ofili, is Nigerian and she could also have represented the country of her birth. Felix met his wife, Lillian, in England and they lived in Plymouth, Birmingham and London before moving to the US. Their daughter, Tiffany, was born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, United States.

In the blue track vest of Ypsilanti West Middle School, a sweet-faced American girl stares straight into the camera with hope and promise pouring out of her. Eleven years later, at the age of 24, Porter is on the brink of competing for Great Britain at the London Olympics. Having held dual nationality since she was a baby – her mother, Lillian, was born in London and her parents lived together in England for years – she might also captain the GB track team at the Games.

Porter was elevated to the role in March, amid much controversy, at the world indoor championships in Istanbul. Charles van Commenee, the astute but provocative national coach, was unapologetic in choosing Porter to lead his team as the Daily Mail continued their “Plastic Brit” campaign against her.

Last June, when she broke the British record for the 100m hurdles, which had been held for 15 years by Angie Thorp, the Mail turned its ire on Porter. “Thorp is what you might call the collateral damage of Van Commenee’s self-serving recruitment policy; a Yorkshire girl whose greatest achievement has been erased by a Plastic Brit passing through our sport for purely selfish reasons.”

It is hard to forget that in 1984, at a time of brutal segregation in South Africa, the Daily Mail harboured a very different Olympic policy. She lived under apartheid then, and remember the outrage when the Mail enticed a waif-like Afrikaans girl from Bloemfontein with the promise that they would help her acquire a British passport so that she could run in the Los Angeles Olympics that summer. Zola Budd’s family links to Britain were much weaker than Porter’s.

Yet, 28 years later, the Mail’s Olympic correspondent accused British athletics of “playing fast and loose with our national identity by appointing as captain a Plastic Brit who would not or cannot recite the words of “God Save The Queen”.

At a press conference just before the world indoor championships, the man from the Mail had invited Porter to sing the first two lines of the national anthem.