Tegla Loroupe interview: ‘When we run away from being greedy, there will be no refugees in the Olympics’

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A solitary leg kick separated the IOC Refugee team at the Olympics from an historic first medal. But Kimia Alizadeh, who had knocked out gold-medal favourite Jade Jones in the opening round of the taekwondo, just missed out.

A bronze medallist at the last Games, she fled Iran and sought asylum in Germany. Each of her 28 teammates have their own story of being displaced from the land of their birth and remarkably finding their way to Tokyo.

Chef de mission Tegla Loroupe is herself no stranger to conflict. In West Pokot from where she hails, it is not uncommon to see men laden with AK-47s across their shoulders.

Conflict in the far west of Kenya has long been an issue, with cattle rustling a way of life for many and tribal wars bubbling over.

For as long as Tegla Loroupe can remember, she has known such adversity. As a young woman, opportunities were limited, to the extent her father told her she was useless and would amount to being a babysitter at best for her 24 siblings.

But at 47, she continues to use her peaceable initiatives and sport to ease conflicts from running races among West Pokot tribes to edge tensions between warring factions to acting as chef de mission for the first Olympic refugee team of 10 athletes in Rio de Janeiro.

Five years on, one of the great distance runners in history – she was the first black African woman to win a major marathon, in New York in 1994 - is again at the helm of arguably the most powerful team in Tokyo.

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“Refugees are people and they should be given opportunities,” she said. “Instead, often people think when you’re a refugee you’re criminal. It’s like they bring a bad omen but it’s not like that. Anyone can be a refugee and get displaced in their country.

“I come from a conflict area and I became the best athlete in the world so these athletes of refugee status just need someone to help them pass these obstacles.”

The refugees train under the banner of the Tegla Loroupe Foundation with funding from the IOC, while Loroupe also set up a school for 400 children when her sister – a mother of six – died.

In addition, she is an activist for female rights and has been outspoken against genital mutilation, and is also an ambassador for the United Nations.

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But first and foremost, she sees herself as a parent to a multitude of children and also refugees.

“I feel like a mother and like a sister,” she said. “When there’s a lot of bad comments, I make sure they don’t reach the athletes. So, I go in there smiling.

“Some feel so depressed when they have news from their families that they have lost somebody and cannot go home. So, when they cry, you also cry. You belong to somebody and they need to feel at home here.”

But despite the achievement of getting a team of refugees dotted around the world to Tokyo, she dreams of the Olympiad when the team is disbanded rather than used to highlight an estimated 65million refugees worldwide.

“As long as we still have conflict, refugees will be there,” she said. “There is so much greed. When we run away from being greedy, there will be no refugees in the Olympics. There will be a team unless the world is at peace but my prayer is we will do away with refugees.

“When we have a peace, we will be competing with the best athlete from Syria without being a refugee or the best athlete in Libya rather than dying in the sea escaping.”

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