Plaatjes Makes His U.S. Mark in Marathon : World track: Former South African rallies for victory. Bosnian woman simply happy to be there in 10-kilometer walk.

After running more than 26 miles on an afternoon when the humidity was as daunting as the temperature for marathoners, Mark Plaatjes appeared dazed as he entered the final 100 meters. Approaching the finish line, he caught the eye of an official and put his palms up, as if to ask, “Is it finally over?” The official nodded. “It is over,” he seemed to be saying. “You are the winner.”

A few hours earlier Saturday, on the same track inside Gottlieb Daimler Stadium, the conditions had begun to wear on Kada Delic as she entered the final lap of the women’s 10-kilometer walk. Two competitors staggered in front of her, eventually falling. But she never wavered, steadfast in her pursuit of the finish line. It was important to her that she make some sort of mark, even if it will be recorded in the record books as only a 38th place.

Although their results were as contrasting as their backgrounds, the opening day of track and field’s fourth World Championships will be remembered as one of triumph for both Plaatjes and Delic.

He is a native South African of mixed race. She is a Moslem from Bosnia-Herzegovina. But they are kindred spirits, both having summoned the strength and courage to overcome numerous challenges, some which threatened their lives, to reach the finish line here.

When Plaatjes, 32, received his U.S. citizenship three weeks ago during a ceremony in his adopted hometown of Boulder, Colo., he declared it “the end of a long journey,” but one that was worth every step because it had given him “a sense of belonging, a sense of identification.”

He did not have that in South Africa, where the white separatist government officially classified him as “colored” and blacks harassed him and his family because he ran in mixed races sanctioned by the white South African Athletic Union.

“My wife and mother received threats all the time, that they were going to find me dead in the road,” he said.

But when Plaatjes sought political asylum in the United States in 1988, he said it was not because he feared his life would be taken but that his infant daughter would never have one if he and his family remained in South Africa.

“I didn’t want my daughter growing up in a country feeling inferior to anyone else,” he said.

Despite sanctions that prevented South Africans from running outside their country, Plaatjes was allowed to compete worldwide as a stateless person. In 1991, he won the Los Angeles Marathon. But his desire was to run while wearing the singlet of his new country, the United States, in either the Summer Olympics or the World Championships.

His chance finally came Saturday.

He promised his training partners in Boulder that he would win a medal, and it appeared its color would be silver when he moved into second place with four miles remaining.

Even Plaatjes admitted later that he believed that was the best he could do when he noticed he was 35 seconds behind the leader, Namibia’s Lucketz Swartbooi, with only two miles remaining. But one mile later, Plaatjes had halved the difference, and with a little more than half a mile to go, he took the lead.

“Wonderful, absolutely wonderful,” Plaatjes said after winning in 2 hours 13 minutes 57 seconds. “I waited years to do this. It is a new beginning for me.”

As the United States’ first champion in a major marathon since Frank Shorter in the 1972 Summer Olympics, Plaatjes’ eyes teared as he stood on the victory podium and heard his new national anthem played for him.

He confessed that he still had feelings for South Africa, but, despite the improving racial conditions there, he said he believes he made the right choice for his family, which now includes three daughters.

“I am an American citizen,” he said, “and this was for America.”

No victory ceremony awaited Kada Delic at the end of her race, only one official from the the Turkish track and field federation who embraced her.

After escaping from the Tuzla region of Bosnia, which has been under siege by the Serbians for more than a year, she has been training since June in Istanbul, where she said that she will return this week. She literally cannot go home again.

“Of course, I would like for the war to end tomorrow so that I can return to my homeland,” she said through an interpreter. “But it is endless, this massacre of my people.”

In separate incidents involving hand grenades, both her parents were killed last year in her family’s village of Kalesija. Her two sisters and a brother, who is a soldier, were still there when Delic left home. But she has not received any word of them since.

“I don’t know whether they live or die,” she said.

Delic, 27, tried to train in Kalesija, but sniper fire drove her from the streets.

“In Bosnia, there is nowhere that has not been damaged,” she said. “People are dying of hunger. There is no humanitarian help. So, of course, it is not possible for athletes to train.”

For that reason, the Bosnian Olympic Committee appealed to its counterpart in Turkey, which, in turn, appealed to its government. Last December, Turkey’s Youth and Sports Ministry began its effort to airlift 120 athletes in numerous sports from Sarajevo, in Bosnia, to Istanbul. Three months later, with the assistance of the United Nations, the first Bosnian athletes arrived in Turkey.

Others have come since, but the road has not been smooth. Delic said it took more than two months to arrange her transportation.

As the only Bosnian athlete in Stuttgart, she has been reunited with athletes who once were her teammates from the former Yugoslavia. Like Delic, the Croatians and Slovenians can compete under their own flags. But because Serbia is not recognized by the International Amateur Athletic Federation, its athletes must compete as individuals.

Delic, however, said that she does not consider them enemies.

“The Serbs help Moslem athletes, and we help them,” she said. “We are very good friends. They are not involved in the war.”

With that, the woman who has lost her country left the track that hours later would become the domain of the man who has found his.