The determined teenager, who will become the first woman to compete for a Palestinian team at the Olympics, possessed just one pair of running shoes.

She had no proper track to train on and no sponsor.

Gunfire posed an ever-present danger and a temporary Israeli-imposed ban on Palestinians aged 16 to 35 leaving the fenced-in Gaza Strip also cast a shadow of uncertainty over her preparations for the Athens Games.

The road from a refugee camp to Athens has been difficult and dangerous but now, with the dream about to come true, things are looking up.

The 19-year-old has several pairs of shoes for a start. And a sponsor, who helped facilitate a month's training on the Greek island of Kos, has also materialised.

Appearing with two team mates at a presentation in Athens on Tuesday, Abu Bkheet thanked those who had helped her battle against the odds to compete for a country which does not officially exist.

BAD CONDITIONS

"In Gaza I trained in very different conditions, usually running on the beach or in the streets in very bad conditions," she said, speaking through a translator.

"I know that other athletes here have had four years training for these Olympics. I have trained properly for one month and it was difficult after running on the sand to get used to the hard surface.

"It was so difficult to run on the sand by the sea, it's so soft and so deep that you can sink 10 centimetres. And it is so difficult to go from sand to the track."

Abu Bkheet last competed on a real track at the pan-Asian Games in Iran last February, finishing sixth, and her best times are way off the world's best.

When she started out in 2000, running in shorts and a T-shirt, residents of the Deir al-Balah refugee camp -- where most women are covered from head to toe -- demanded she dress more modestly.

Kids threw sticks and stones at her.

"It's not easy being a woman athlete here," she said in an interview in her austere, breeze-block home earlier this year.

Her team mates in Athens, 17-year-old swimmer Raad Awassat and 800 metres runner Abdelsalam Al-Dabagi, have not had it easy either.

"I consider it a big dream to take part in the Olympic Games," said Al-Dabagi, who also comes from the Gaza Strip but had been training in Egypt before the Games.

"My reason for training in Egypt instead of Gaza was that I was afraid that while training the Israelis might consider me a terrorist and shoot me."