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Athletics

Watch ‘RUN – The Athlete Refugee Team Story’ | FEATURE

 
‘RUN – The Athlete Refugee Team Story’, shares the incredible and inspirational story of the Athlete Refugee Team (ART), from its formal beginnings in early 2017 through the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic last year that halted, albeit temporarily, their seemingly impossible journey towards the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Three years in the making and released in 2020, the feature-length documentary (93 minutes) by director Richard Bullock begins with an introduction to some of the refugee athletes selected to compete on the inaugural Refugee Olympic Team in Rio, who train at the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation training camp in Ngong, Kenya.

We meet Loroupe, a pioneer in women’s distance running renowned now as much for her community development and peace-making efforts as for her achievements in sport, who approached World Athletics and the IOC with the refugee team concept and who helped hand-pick those athletes from trials competitions at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in northeast Kenya.

And, we follow the athletes’ journey after that ground-breaking and symbolic debut on the world stage at the Rio Games when the programme shifted its focus to longer term goals as it expands to include refugees based in other areas.

But like the best documentaries, the film is at its finest when it shares personal moments that illustrate the challenges and the difficult choices the athletes face, both in and out of training and competition and when showing the importance the athletes place on representing the faceless millions around the world that are currently displaced in unprecendented numbers.

In its annual Global Trends report issued earlier this week, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, reported that nearly 82.4 million people were living displaced from their homes at the end of 2020, a further four per cent increase on top of the already record-high 79.5 million at the end of 2019. Last year marked the ninth straight year of uninterrupted rise in forced displacement worldwide and witnessed a doubling of the number of displaced persons in the world since 2011, when the total was just under 40 million.

When the postponed Tokyo Olympic Games will finally be staged later this summer, the team’s participation – seven were ultimately chosen to compete in athletics – will once again became a source of inspiration for those tens of millions while their stories will resonate with millions more.

“We try to pass a message through sport for the people to recognise that the refugee, that whatever any human being can do, that refugees can also do,” says Anjelina Nadai Lohalith, who will make her second Olympic appearance in Tokyo. “Once they are given the chance.”

Bob Ramsak for World Athletics

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Athletics

Abraham – from refugee to Olympic rings | FEATURE

It would be understandable for anyone to be fazed by the presence of an athlete like the ground-breaking Eliud Kipchoge in their event. But for Swiss marathon record-holder Tadesse Abraham, competing against the world record-holder and Olympic gold medal-winning Kenyan icon is a modest challenge compared to what he faced as a young refugee.

On World Refugee Day (20), Abraham is a beacon for millions of refugees, having rebuilt his life in an unfamiliar land and eventually represented his new homeland with distinction on the biggest stage of all, the Olympic Games. In Abraham’s case, it meant the talented runner making his way to Switzerland after competing for Eritrea at the 2004 World Cross Country Championships in Brussels, Belgium.

He arrived in a country where he knew little of the culture, spoke none of the native Swiss-German language and knew no-one. Not only was it an alien environment in which he had to integrate, but it meant the likely sacrifice of a promising championship athletics career.

“It was very strange. It was a challenge for me,” he says, looking back on his arrival. “Comparing with some of the others (refugees), it was easier because I could talk English. But in Switzerland, they don’t reply to you in English. They believe you should try their language and try to integrate, which I see now is very important.

“It was quite difficult for me. You arrive as a twenty-something, you want to do everything, you are young, you are alone, you have no possibilities, so as a refugee it was really tough. The language, the culture, the food – everything is different. But the mountains – we have the same in Eritrea.”


Tadesse Abraham competes in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games marathon (© Getty Images)

It also meant putting his running career on pause as he was stationed in the refugee camp.

“When you come to Switzerland as a refugee you have to know the place where you are. You can’t run where you don’t know the place. I was in the camp and I was not allowed out, and for three or four months, I didn’t run,” he says.

Despite that, he was an immediate success on his return to competition later that year, winning his first race in his adopted home – the half marathon at the 2004 Winterthur Marathon – in 1:07:34.

For the next few years, he could only race domestically. Then in 2007, after he was given a permit to stay and a travel document, he ventured into the international road racing scene, competing in races in Bologna, Bogota and Gongju. In 2009, there was also an eye-catching 1:01:25 in a high-quality Berlin Half Marathon. He also began to make his mark in the marathon, winning in Zurich in 2:10:09 in 2009 and following it up with a solid seventh-place finish at the 2010 Berlin Marathon in 2:09:24.

His career was given further impetus when he was awarded Swiss citizenship in 2014 and it meant his return to championship racing after a 10-year gap. Competing in front of home crowds at the European Championships in Zurich, he placed ninth in the men’s marathon in 2:15:05.

But the best was yet to come. Two years on, in Olympic year, he broke the Swiss national record for the marathon, with 2:06:40 placing him fourth at the Seoul Marathon. He went on to win the European half marathon title in Amsterdam in 1:02:03, capped with team gold for Switzerland. Then at the Rio Olympics, he was a highly respectable seventh in the marathon in 2:11:42. The winner that day was of course Kipchoge and the Kenyan remains an inspiration for Abraham as he looks towards the Tokyo Games this summer.

“I’m feeling motivated. Kipchoge is not young and me too – I am not young,” he says. “The age is, he assured me – and I believe too – just a number when you prepare very well and concentrate. No human is limited. We don’t have a limit and when you are concentrated, it is true.

“He achieved everything, so why not? We do the same. Kipchoge is a big example for us, a very disciplined athlete. I would love to be like him. It gives me more motivation to prepare and to train every day. In the morning I wake up and think about Kipchoge and train much like him.”

Despite the restrictions from the pandemic, Abraham is naturally optimistic over Tokyo and has prepared diligently at altitude in his home country.

“It’s quite a crazy time now because of the pandemic,” he says. “It’s part of life what has happened. My preparation is very good, I am on my way, I am excited, it will be my second Olympics. It makes sense to prepare in Switzerland. We have St Moritz in Switzerland at 18,000ft. I have been there and there are a lot of athletes from Africa, a lot of Kenyans who use it too. It is a very nice location for training. I train every year there.”


Tadesse Abraham wins the European half marathon title in Amsterdam (© Getty Images)

But whilst he looks towards the giddy heights of an Olympic Games, Abraham is an athlete who remains grounded and mindful of his refugee roots. He is closely involved as an ambassador with the Human Safety Net, a charity that supports vulnerable people including refugees. This consists of supporting the refugee running team.

“I participate on the coaching party,” he explains. “They have their own coach, but as long as I have time, I share my ideas with them and sometimes I coach them running.” During the pandemic, this has also extended to delivering coaching courses via video conferences too.

And, just as he was lent a hand as a refugee, he extends the same hand to other refugees.

“I help them to be more like me or better than me in the direction of integration. To help the refugee means there is humanity,” says the runner whose passion for his sport is matched by his compassion for his fellow man.

Abraham is also currently serving as an ambassador for the inaugural World Athletics Run Smarter City Challenge, a friendly competition between the running communities in the Swiss cities of Geneva and Lausanne to raise awareness about the importance or air quality on running and exercise.

“Having had the chance as a runner to train and compete in different parts of this world, I have learned to appreciate the importance of clean air,” he says. “Living now in Switzerland, I also know how lucky I am to have such good air quality here. In other parts of the world where I trained or raced, I sometimes encountered heavy air pollution which was harming my health. This is not only a concern for runners, but for all the people facing bad air. I would like to take action and lead by example.”

Chris Broadbent for World Athletics

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Athletics

Tokyo selection is dream come true for Refugee Olympic Team member Keletela | FEATURE

In the lead-up to World Refugee Day on 20 June, members of the Refugee Olympic Team will be sharing their stories in a series of features as they prepare for the Games in Tokyo. The series continues with sprinter Dorian Keletela.

With the exception of the football World Cup, there’s simply no stage in sport that can rival the Olympic Games – its global reach, its captive audience, the knowledge participants have that on that platform, for those few weeks, the whole world is watching.

As such, it’s an ideal place to not only entertain, but also inspire – a medium through which to send a message. For Dorian Keletela, a 22-year-old member of the IOC Refugee Olympic Team, his performance in the men’s 100m in Tokyo will be about far more than his time or finishing position.

“The world needs inspiration, a good message,” he says. “The message I want to send is that refugee people are a strong people and they can do everything a normal person can do.”

A native of Congo, Keletela faced tragedy early in life. In his teens he lost both of his parents, who were victims of political persecution, and he moved in with his aunt, who cared for him thereafter.

“In Congo the important thing is to respect your Mum, and I respected her like a Mum,” he says.

In 2016 the two fled to Portugal where he spent more than a year in refugee centres, a difficult situation but one he had to endure to escape the risk at home.

“It was very complicated to live there,” he says of his native country. “But (leaving) was not really a choice.”

Keletela first took up athletics at the age of 15 while still living in Congo and, the following year, he ran 10.68 for 100m. After settling in Portugal and joining a local club, he lowered his best to 10.48 in 2017.

He arrived unable to speak Portuguese but these days he’s fluent and for all the difficulties he endured, he has since built a much better life, with plans to become a coach in the future.

“In Portugal I have more liberty,” he says. “This is very fundamental because people look for liberty in life. Congo doesn’t have liberty.”

In March this year, Keletela became the first member of the World Athletics Athlete Refugee Team to compete at the European Indoor Championships, powering down the track in the light blue singlet and finishing eighth in his 60m heat in 6.91.

Dorian Keletela in action at the European Indoor Championships

“This experience was very good for me because it was a championship of Europe,” he says. “I was thankful to all those who helped make it happen.”

A member of Sporting Lisbon, Keletela has worn their green and white stripes with pride at many domestic events over the past couple of years. Keletela joined the Athlete Refugee Team programme in 2019 but injury sidelined him from the World Championships that year. Despite the disruption to training caused by the pandemic last year, he lowered his 100m best to 10.46 (0.7m/s) in Lisbon and clocked 10.48 in the heats of the national championships.

His 2021 season is already shaping up well, with a 10.55 100m clocking in May and a wind-aided 10.51 (+2.2m/s) in June. He typically trains six days a week for up to three or four hours a day, and last week his hard work was rewarded when he was among 29 athletes from 11 countries named on the IOC Refugee Olympic Team. They will compete across 12 sports at the Tokyo Games.

“My objective is to make a mark,” he says. “I hope to do a personal best.”

But his goal also runs deeper than that.

Keletela knows that as countries become more multi-cultural, there can often be a growing swell of anti-immigration sentiment, but he wants people to know what life is really like for refugees, how the similarities to them far outweigh the differences.

“People sometimes have the impression refugees are bad but they are normal people,” he says. “Refugees are very motivated to invest in their life, to recreate their life. They are normal people that just had to move from their country that’s in conflict to go to another.”

Over time, he has seen the positives of being a refugee.

“For me, to be a refugee is an opportunity to be here to run,” he says. “If I wasn’t a refugee, I wouldn’t be able to run at the Olympics. I can be an inspiration for other refugees and people who have a similar experience to me because life is not always easy for everyone.”

Making the Games is something Keletela “never dreamed of” before arriving in Portugal, but ever since hearing about the refugee team a vision formed: him settling into the blocks alongside the fastest men in the world on the grandest stage in sport.

“When I saw this group I said, ‘maybe one day I will be part of this’,” he says. “And now this dream is my reality.”

Cathal Dennehy for World Athletics

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