V 10 N. 64 Former Bowling Green State U. Runner Makes it Big in the Fashion World

Hanane Sabri

Back in the mid 1990's my friend and blog colleague Steve Price was coaching at Bowling Green State University having a lot of success with the women's team.  He was noted for taking slightly above average runners and turning them into very, very good runners.  One of the few who came to BG already well established on their home turf was Hanane Sabri from France.  Steve's sister Rachel was teaching in France at the University of Strasbourg and recognized her talent and connected her with Steve.  Hanane's  family was from North Africa,  Morocco or Algeria, I can't remember.  She was Muslim, but as a second generation resident in France, she was comfortable in western running gear.  I recall that she was good enough to place high in the Mid American conference in cross country, and was on the BG team that qualified to go to the NCAA nationals in a very tough district including Wisconsin, Michigan, and Notre Dame.  She also qualified for the indoor track nationals. She was French 1500m champion in 2001.    Her future husband Medhi Baala ran for France in the Olympics and made it to the 1500 finals and placed fourth at Sydney in 2000 in 3:34.14 behind Ngeny, El Garrouj, and Lagat.

Hanane as the linked article will indicate, has gone on to a spectacular career in the clothing industry, having had a high ranking job with Adidas and now is living in Hong Kong and involved in the fashion industry with Kipling there and in China.  That's a long way from Bowling Green.

Hanane Sabri   from sportyjob   13 June 2020
by Claudia Trabalski

Sydney 2000 Men's 1500 Comments:

What’s hard to get with this? Fine athletes have a lot of talent outside of their sport.  That’s why I like coaching D3 football Mike Waters MA Dir of Health pro

Richard Mach
to me

Fast company.  Mehdi was behind the three best milers in the world.  And that can still be said strictly 

on the basis of PBs two full decades later.    

ElG has the mile and 1500m WRS  And Ngeny has the second fastest mile time ever and LaGat has the 

2nd fastest 1500 m time ever.  In every other Olympics, Baala would have been on the podium .. 

everything being equal. 

George:  Yes I do remember her.  She beat the crap out of us in lots of races:)  I always 

wondered how STeve got her!!!!   Thanks, Rich

Dr. Richard J. Ceronie

Track & Field Office

Department of Athletics

editor's note,   Richard Ceronie was coaching at Miami of Ohio when Hanane was doing 

you know what to his team.