Ben Assou El Ghazi
Ben Assou El Ghazi is a Moroccan long-distance runner who competed in track and cross country running events. He represented his country in the 3000 metres steeplechase at the 1964 Summer Olympics. He was the winner of the 1966 International Cross Country Championships – the second African to do so after Rhadi Ben Abdesselam. He also led the Moroccan team to African's first team medal at the tournament. He won two gold medals on the track at the 1965 Pan Arab Games.
Career
El Ghazi first emerged as an international athlete at the 1964 International Cross Country Championships, where he ran in the Moroccan team and helped them to finish third in the rankings through his 17th-place finish. Though fellow Moroccan Rhadi Ben Abdesselam had won the race four years earlier, this represented the first time that a non-European nation had reached the team podium in the international cross country competition. El Ghazi's Olympic debut followed later that year and at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics he placed ninth in the final of the steeplechase. He was Morocco's top performer at the 1965 International Cross Country Championships, but in 38th place he had fallen down the rankings. Greater recognition came a t the 1965 Pan Arab Games, however, where he won a gold medal double in the 5000 metres and the steeplechase and then sixth in the 1971 race, where El Ghazi finished 49th in his last appearance. No Moroccan reached the top fifteen in this period. A revival occurred in 1972 when four men achieved that feat to bring Morocco to second – the best placing of an African team in the competition's history.The final highlight of El Ghazi's career came in the steeplechase: he completed a Moroccan 1–2 as a silver medallist behind Miloud Chenna at the 1971 Maghreb Athletics Championships.