OLYMPICS / Barcelona 1992: When reality hits home: Olympic Round-up

TWO notes of reality cut through the spectacle and fantasy in Barcelona yesterday.

Mirsada Buric, a 22-year-old Bosnian 3,000m runner from Sarajevo who revealed she was twice nearly hit by snipers while training for the Games, said: 'I am enjoying all this but at the same time I feel very strange. My body is here but my soul and my heart are with all those suffering in my town. Every moment and every minute I am thinking of my friends, my parents and my neighbours, of my brother who I have not seen for two months. I don't know where he is and I am suffering very much.'

The president of the Croatian National Olympic Committee, Antun Vrdoljak, took up the theme. 'Wrestlers, boxers and kayakists are not here because they preferred to stay at the battle front,' he said. 'Others could not come because they were badly injured at the front and many of those that did come have been involved in the fight.'