For the countries like the United States and Australia it is easy to focus so much on medal tallies. For developing countries like East Timor just fielding an Olympic team is a big enough challenge.

Domingos Sarmento Soares plays wheelchair tennis is hoping to make it to the Beijing Olympics. Trouble is he doesn’t even have a wheelchair to use to train.

The only chair he has is one he got from an Australian athlete.

“There’s only one wheelchair so we can’t do daily training,” Soares says.

“When we play in China we’ll borrow one more there.”

East Timor gained independence from Indonesia in 1999 and is one of the poorest countries in the world, yet they hope to send two marathon runners, Antonio Ramos and Mariana Diaz Ximenez as well as 11 other paralympians.

“In all the other sports we cannot qualify to participate in Beijing. Sport is not a priority for the government of East Timor and our infrastructure is non-existent,” he says.

“We don’t have any hope of winning the marathon, but to finish the marathon is already an achievement,” said Joao Carrascalao, the head of Timor’s Olympic committee. “We don’t have facilities in East Timor to train for the marathon, but you can train on the road.”

It stories like these that Olympics are all about.

Read more: Tiny East Timor faces huge hurdles on road to Beijing Olympics