Maria Mutola

Maputo, July 8 (Reuters): Maria Mutola’s face beams from banners and walls of buildings in her native Mozambique, a beacon of hope in a country known worldwide for war, floods and hunger.

The dominant figure in the women’s 800 metres for a decade, Mutola became the first athlete to win the $1 million Golden League jackpot outright last year, pushing her to heady heights in this southern African country of 18 million people where per capita income is well below $300 a year.

Mutola, who will defend her Olympic title in Athens next month, is idolised at home because she ploughs much of her riches into a foundation to help upcoming athletes and fight the rampant poverty in her homeland.

Mutola, with a frame that ripples with muscles, is the most recognisable Mozambican at home after President Joaquim Chissano. Mozambican companies are tripping over each other for her endorsement in a small economy.

“She’s an inspiration in this country. Hundreds of young children look up and say: hey, we want to be like Maria, a world champion,” President Chissano said from his seaside palace in this steamy tropical port on the Indian Ocean.

“Every time in history there emerges a person who influences the lives of others, and Mutola has been a positive influence in Mozambique over the past two decades.”

The Lourdes Mutola Foundation — Lourdes is Maria’s middle name — works to identify talented athletes at an early age and arrange their training at home and overseas.

Education and food programmes for the selected athletes usually followed because of the grinding poverty some families faced, Bruno Macamo, president of the foundation, said in an interview.

Two-thirds of Mozambique’s population live below the World Bank’s poverty threshold of $1 a day and the United Nations lists the country, which suffered 16 years of civil war, as one of the world’s 10 poorest nations.

“We are helping some athletes to study and train abroad already,” Macamo said, pointing to long-jump prospect Elisa Cossa who is on a Mutola scholarship in former colonial power Portugal and sprinter Carina Pinto who is sharing the flat Mutola has called home for many years in Oregon in the US.

Mutola also provides a home for her cousin Catarina, whose mother died from malaria 13 years ago.