Athletes and sports programs in Libya were woefully neglected during Moammar Gadhafi’s four-decade rule. With Gadhafi’s regime toppled last month, Libya’s athletes and sports officials are hoping for a better future.

Oil-rich Libya has never won an Olympic medal and ranks near the bottom in sports competition with other Mediterranean countries that had far fewer resources, including neighboring Tunisia and Egypt.

“Sport, as a social activity, must be for the masses,” Gadhafi said in his treatise, “The Green Book.”

“It is mere stupidity to leave its benefits to certain individuals and teams who monopolize them while the masses provide the facilities and pay the expenses for the establishment of public sports.”

Nabil Eleman, president of Libya’s Olympic committee, said he’s expecting the country’s new leaders, among them National Transitional Council chairman Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, a former football player, to invest heavily in sports.

“Sports was not a priority” for Gadhafi, Eleman said in an interview. “We are very optimistic now.”

Eleman is setting his sights on the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. There’s little chance Libyans will win medals in the 2012 Games in London, in part because of the eight-month civil war that ended with Gadhafi’s death on Oct. 20.

On a recent sunny afternoon, several Olympic hopefuls met for the first time in months at Libya’s main track at a rundown sports center in the capital of Tripoli.

Mohamed Khawaja was stretching on the sidelines.

The 400-meter runner won gold at the 2009 Mediterranean Games and the 2010 African Championships, but said Libya’s war and lack of funding prevented him from participating in the 2011 World Championships in Korea.

Still, the 24-year-old’s personal best of 44.98 seconds is well within the 45.25-second qualifying threshold for London. Asked whether he believes he has a shot at a medal, he said: “Nothing is impossible.”

Like other Libyans, he was bitter about the old regime.

“There was nothing called sports in the days of Gadhafi,” he said. “They tried to kill sports. They had a committee to fight stars, not to let them shine.”

Khawaja said he hopes Libya’s new leaders will be different.

“At the same time, they need to start (making changes) as quickly as possible because we have a lot to catch up on ...” he said.

Discus thrower Ali Khalifa’s spot on a Libyan Olympic team is less secure.

He threw 57 meters in training in Tunisia at the beginning of the year. However, his personal best in competition was 55.19 meters in 2010, way off the 63-meter Olympic minimum.

The burly 28-year-old said he trained only sporadically during the war. “I was hiding from NATO,” Khalifa said of the alliance’s bombing raids against regime-linked targets during the civil war.

His part-time coach, cafe owner Abdullah Jarhour, said Khalifa would now train twice a day for next month’s Pan Arab Games in the United Arab Emirates. On Monday, the first day of training, Jarhour sat on a white plastic chair at the edge of the track and counted as Khalifa, looking a bit stiff, did stretches, lunges and forward bends with weights.

Other Libyans hoping to qualify for the London Games have gone abroad to train, in part because the country lacks facilities. (AP)