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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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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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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 begins with 1500m runner Anjelina Nadai Lohalith.

Last Tuesday’s confirmation that Anjelina Nadai Lohalith had been picked for the Refugee Olympic Team for a second successive Games was cause for celebration – and the 28-year-old 1500m runner duly marked the occasion at her Ngong training camp in Kenya, with much “music and dancing”.

But any day now an even more significant moment awaits as she prepares to reunite with the family she left behind when, aged nine, she escaped from her war-ravaged village in South Sudan and made her way to the vast Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya – where her father and mother have recently arrived themselves.

It will be the first time she has seen her parents since the day she and her aunt boarded a United Nations truck that had been bringing food into an area traumatically affected by a civil war that eventually ended in 2005, three years after she had reached her new home.

Recalling in a Zoom call from her training centre how the war had come to her village, Lohalith said: “Soldiers came in the night. I didn’t understand what was happening, I just heard the shooting.

“We ran to the next village and we slept in the bush at nights. We wanted to go back to our village to get food and all the things we had left behind. It was really an emergency, and we had almost nothing with us.

“But we were told we could not go back because the soldiers were occupying our village and around the village there were what they called ‘weapons underground’, which were landmines. It was not safe.

“The UN bus came with food, and that was how I was able to get out with my aunt. I thought my family would be coming after me. But they didn’t come.”

Lohalith’s “dearest wish”

Lohalith has maintained since making the Refugee Olympic Team for the Rio 2016 Games as one of five track athletes that her “dream” was to one day help her parents.

Asked how she felt about the prospect of meeting them after so long, she paused for a few moments before saying: “It is my dearest wish.”

She added: “It makes me so happy that my parents are now in the camp. Soon we will have a welcome party!”

Already, however, her mother and father have met their grandson for the first time – Lohalith’s four-year-old son Jayden Luis Monutore.

Her parents were preceded to Kakuma by other relatives, including another of her aunts and a cousin, and they have helped to look after Jayden – already a natural runner according to his proud mum – while she has been training to make the Rio 2016 team.

“My parents don’t know about my running,” she said. “They only know about my schooling. I think it will be hard for them to understand about the Olympics. They don’t know anything about it.”

Anjelina Nadai Lohalith trains at the Refugee Athletes Centre in Ngong (© AFP / Getty Images)

Lohalith has spoken in the past of how Tegla Loroupe, Kenya’s former world marathon record-holder and three-time world half marathon winner, came to the Kakuma Camp as part of the work of her Peace Foundation and organised trial races in 2015 to identify those who might be able to run at the Olympics.

At that time Lohalith knew nothing of international athletics but she had been, like her son, a natural runner for as long as she could remember.

“Wherever I went I would run,” she recalled. “When I went to fetch something for my mother I always ran, because I didn’t want to be beaten by her!

“I just loved running for no reason, but I did not know anything about racing until Tegla came to the camp. I didn’t know who she was – I only found out about her medals and her world record later.”

In Rio, Lohalith ran 4:47.38 in her opening 1500m heat. Two years later she reduced that time to 4:33.54 at the World Athletics Championships in London.

She wanted to continue her international career by appearing at the Doha 2019 World Championships. “I wanted to go to Doha but it was soon after maternity leave and I just didn’t make it,” she said. “It was not my time to go. But now I AM going back to the Olympics!

“I was not sure I would be in the team. I was nervous. I am so happy to be going to Tokyo.”

Another chance

Part of the reason for her uncertainty was the difficulties the pandemic had thrown up to her training regime, which faltered as the Olympics were postponed by a year.

“We were training very hard for the Olympics. In 2020 we were in very good shape, very confident. I felt I was in shape to reach the semifinals,” she said.

“Then it was very difficult, we had to go back to the camp and try to train there, but you could not train in big groups. And it was very hot – we used to train at five in the morning, but we missed the facilities of the training camp.

“Tegla was very encouraging, she gave us schedules while we were back in the camp. She said: ‘It will be difficult, but you have to try and stay with it. It will be hard, but you can do it.’”

In Lohalith’s case, Loroupe was right.

“I can say I feels so great,” the soon-to-be double Olympian said. “I am really honoured but it was not something I ever expected. I feel so happy to be given another chance, and I just want to improve on my best time.

“People all over the world wish to get this chance, but that is something that not all of us can do. It’s very hard. That is why they were using some kind of criteria to select athletes.

“Before Rio in the camp we were told that maybe one person can be lucky to go. But from my team all six of us were lucky to be selected. Now the number is halved. There is a higher competition now and that is why they did so many trials.”

Anjelina Nadai Lohalith in action at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (© AFP / Getty Images)

Since arriving in Kenya, Lohalith has learned fluent English. Asked how she had managed to attain this language, she responded: “I just read. I like reading novels – love novels, inspiring books. One of my favourite authors is Nelson Mandela.”

Speaking recently, Rwanda’s International Olympic Committee member Felicite Rwemarika described how she had been forced to flee her home when members of the Tutsi tribe were being massacred in 1959, and added that, during her subsequent travel in Uganda and Burundi, her family had been treated with suspicion and denied access to vital services, having to change their name at one point.

How had Lohalith’s experience of being a refugee in a foreign land compared?

“I have not been through that kind of an issue,” she said. “Not that much. We are in camp most of the time. We and Kenyans, most of the time we are the same with our facial appearance.

“It only happens sometimes if you meet with some few people, but only with a few.

“You cannot expect them to be 100 per cent about refugees in another country. Not everybody can see what you are going through. They can’t understand it. Some will be negative. When you introduce yourself as a refugee, they get a look on their face. We just have to understand, we don’t have any choice.

“We hope others see we are just normal people like them.”

The power of sport

As well as visiting Rio and London to compete, Lohalith has also been to Uganda and to Canada, where she attended the One Young World Summit in Ottawa, a global forum for youth leaders to discuss global issues.

“I enjoy travelling a lot,” she said. “It is part of my passion – travelling to see the world. When I was young, I always told myself that one day you will be travelling the world in an airplane. But I never had an idea on what I was going to do or how it could happen.

“But now my dream has happened. It is sport that has helped me to travel.

“Through running I was able to know more people, people who have been able to compete in international races. I feel so great when I make so many friends from other countries.

“When I compete, I can meet people and make friends and we stay in contact. I am always happy and honoured for it, to be building that kind of a relationship with people.

“People do not just go to compete, they make friends in different countries. It is something very great for me. That is a big reason why sport is so important – it can also bring people together.”

For now, however, Lohalith is turning her eyes once more to the Olympic arena.

Asked when she would leave for Japan, she laughed suddenly and exclaimed: “I don’t care when I go! I am going!”

Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics

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Seven refugee athletes will compete in athletics at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, part of a squad of 29 announced today (8) by the International Olympic Committee.

Competing under the Olympic flag as the IOC Refugee Olympic Team, the athletes will take part in 12 sports at the postponed Olympic Games from 23 July to 8 August, with athletics represented by the largest squad.

The team includes Rose Nathike Lokonyen, the team’s flag-bearer at the 2016 Games in Rio, and Anjelina Nadai Lohalith, another veteran of the 10-member 2016 team. Originally from South Sudan, the two live and train at the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation camp in Ngong, Kenya. Lokonyen will compete in the 800m and Lohalith in the 1500m.

Loroupe, a former marathon world record-holder, three -time world champion and 2000 Olympian, will reprise her role as team’s Chef de Mission.

Heading the men’s squad is Tachlowini Gabriyesos, the 23-year-old Eritrean native who clocked 2:10:55 at the Hahula Galilee Marathon on 14 March to become the first refugee athlete to better an Olympic qualifying standard. His run in Sapporo will mark the third marathon appearance for Gabriyesos, who trains with the Emek Hefer Club in Tel Aviv.

Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed, a Sudanese refugee who has trained with the Alley Runners Club in Tel Aviv since 2014, will compete in the 5000m. Mohammed, 27, competed on the World Athletics Refugee Team (ART) at the 2019 World Cross Country Championships and 2019 World Championships. More recently, he represented the ART at the European 10,000m Cup in Birmingham last weekend, finishing fifth in the B race in 28:52.64. He set his 5000m lifetime best of 13:54.28 in 2019.

Paulo Amotun Lokoro, another South Sudanese refugee based at the camp in Ngong, will also be making his second Olympic appearance, again competing in the 1500m. Lokoro, 29, improved his personal best to 3:47.03 in 2019, and competed on the World Athletics ART at the 2018 World Half Marathon Championships and 2019 World Championships.

Dorian Keletela, a Congolese refugee based in Portugal, will compete in the 100m. Keletela, 22, competed in the 60m at the European Indoor Championships in March, the first refugee athlete to compete at those championships. Keletela has a 10.46 lifetime best set in 2020.

James Nyang Chiengjiek, another member of the squad in Rio who will compete in the 800m in Tokyo, rounds out the squad. He’ll be moving up from the 400m event he contested at the last Olympic Games.

Three coaches will be part of the athletics delegation: Francis Obikwelu, the 2004 Olympic silver medallist in the 100m; veteran middle distance coach Joseph Domongole from Kenya; and Alemayehu Gebrmeskel from Israel, who will coach the distance events.

The athletes were selected from a group of 55 refugee athletes currently supported by the IOC through the Olympic Scholarships for Refugee Athletes programme. At the Opening Ceremonies on 23 July, the team will be the second delegation to enter the stadium, sending a powerful message of inclusion, solidarity and hope to the world while bringing further awareness to the plight of more than 80 million people who are currently displaced worldwide.

IOC President Thomas Bach announces the IOC Refugee Olympic Team for Tokyo 2020

“Congratulations to all of you,” IOC President Thomas Bach said, addressing the athletes.

“When you, the IOC Refugee Olympic Team and the athletes from the National Olympic Committees from all over the globe, finally come together in Tokyo on 23 July, it will send a powerful message of solidarity, resilience and hope to the world. You are an integral part of our Olympic community, and we welcome you with open arms.”

UNHCR High Commissioner Filippo Grandi also offered his congratulations.

“I am thrilled to congratulate each of the athletes who have been named in the Refugee Olympic Team Tokyo 2020,” he said.

“Surviving war, persecution and the anxiety of exile already makes them extraordinary people, but the fact that they now also excel as athletes on the world stage fills me with immense pride. It shows what is possible when refugees are given the opportunity to make the most of their potential.”

The full delegation will meet for the first time as a team at the Aspire Academy in Doha on 12 and 13 July before flying to Japan on 14 July. During the Games, the team will be hosted by Waseda University, which will provide accommodation and training facilities, before the athletes move to the Olympic Village for their respective competitions.

The IOC Refugee Olympic Team will compete in Tokyo under the French acronym EOR, which stands for Equipe Olympique des Réfugiés. In all other competitions, refugee athletes compete as part of the World Athletics Athlete Refugee Team (ART).

Bob Ramsak for World Athletics

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