As he surveys the faded, crumbling running track where he trains, Ismail Ahmed Ismail's dream of Olympic glory seems fanciful. “First I need to get into the final. Once I am there then I will think about medals,” said the 23-year-old 800m runner from Darfur. “Anything is possible.”

Darfur activists in the West may be campaigning for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics - in an attempt to pressure China into ending its support for the Khartoum Government, which is waging war against rebels in the western region - but for a handful of young Darfuris, Beijing is a place for their dreams to come true.

Ismail, who reached the 800m final in Athens four years ago, said: “Talk of a boycott makes me angry. We have people in the team from Darfur who are running. If we lost the chance of the Olympics we would have to wait another four years before having another chance.”

His family comes from Wadi Saleh in west Darfur and are members of the Fur tribe. But he says that ethnicity does not matter when he pulls on his Sudanese team vest.

His roommate, Abubaker Kaki Khamis, comes from the Misseriya tribe, whose mounted Arab militias wrought havoc in south Sudan where they fought for the Government during a long and bitter civil war. They were the forerunners of the Janjawid in Darfur, who have raped and killed thousands of Ismail's tribemates.

Khamis, 18, is Sudan's best hope of a medal. Last month he was crowned world indoor 800m champion - the youngest yet - and since then has been fêted by Omar el-Bashir, the President of Sudan, had songs written for him and been given parcels of land around Khartoum.

Like many young athletes his only dream is to earn enough money to buy his parents a house. “Everything else is on hold now as I go for an Olympic win, but I need to help my family,” he said at the simple village of prefabricated huts where the athletes live.

Khamis may be pinning his hopes on gold but he has to cope with the same basic training conditions as everyone else. Sudan's Olympic hopefuls use paint pots filled with concrete for weight training. Their athletics stadium was never finished. Piles of rubble surround the track. And there are no floodlights - all training comes to a halt when the sun disappears.

Sudan has little in the way of a tradition in track and field. While Ethiopia and Kenya dominate distance events, Sudan has not so much as an Olympic medal to its name.

That could be about to change. Jama Aden, who coached Abdi Bile to a world title in 1987, has spent the past six years trawling the country for talent. Five of his young team have picked up sponsorship with Nike. The rest survive on hand-me-downs. A donation from the British Embassy in Khartoum is the only way he can afford to get his team to Beijing. He said: “The facilities we have are poor compared with what there is in the West but the athletes make up for it by being keen and willing to work extra hard. So what makes me upset is when the Western world says we should have a boycott. People don't realise that Darfur benefits from all this.”

By the time he has finalised his 12-strong team for Beijing, he thinks half will be from Darfur - where Chinese-built planes and AK47s are used in the conflict - and there will be Zaghawa and Fur, tribes that support the region's rebel movements, running alongside Arabs.

So while activists in New York and London believe the Olympics are a time to put pressure on China to stop selling arms to Sudan and buying its oil, the athletes believe it is a chance to improve their country's reputation abroad. Nawal El Jack, a 400m runner, summed it up: “People only think of bad things when they think of Sudan. Beijing is our chance to show people we can do good things, too.”