Tokyo Olympics: Rose Nathike Lokonyen, the Olympic path for refugees
Audio 04:09
Athlete Rose Nathike Lokonyen will compete in her second Olympic Games in Tokyo.
© UNHCR / Benjamin Loyseau
Text by: Albane Thirouard
9 mins
For the second time in the history of the Olympic Games, an international team of refugees will participate in the international competition.
In Kenya, four athletes have been selected to be part of it.
Young athlete Rose Nathike Lokonyen will run the 800 meters for her second participation.
Originally from South Sudan, she has been a refugee in Kenya since 2002. While awaiting her departure for Japan, she trains on the heights of Ngong, 25 km from Nairobi.
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From our correspondent in Nairobi,
Albane Thirouard
The 28-year-old athlete runs under the watchful eye of her coaches.
On the program this morning: 6 times 200 meters in interval training.
If today Rose Nathike Lokonyen connects the accelerations with flexibility, she started athletics late.
Long after arriving in Kenya in 2002.
Born in South Sudan, she fled her country at age eight, when her village was attacked.
“
Me, my family and a few neighbors managed to escape.
We took two days to reach a nearby town called Chukudum.
From there, we were able to get on a truck to reach Nadapal, on the border between South Sudan and Kenya.
We stayed there for a few weeks while waiting for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to come and pick us up.
"
The girl and her family then arrived at Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya.
It was there that she started to run.
At first a football fan, her high school teachers encouraged her to participate in a ten kilometer race in 2015. She won second place, which allowed her to join the training center created by the former marathoner Tegla Loroupe, in Ngong.
The emotion in Rio
She doesn't realize it yet, but the goal is to compete in the Olympics the following year in Rio. “
I didn't even know what the Olympics were like. It was the first time I had heard of it. When we got to the training center, they had to explain everything to me. Then they told us we were going to go to Rio, Brazil. I thought it was the name of a place in Nairobi, not that it was on another continent
!
She recalls.
This is how Rose Nathike Lokonyen joined the first international team of refugees to participate in the Olympic Games.
In 2016
, she even led their entry into the stadium wearing the Olympic flag. This moment, she remembers with emotion: “
When the microphones cried
:
'And now the refugee team is entering the Maracaña stadium',
we were applauded by all the countries. It made us feel that we were all human beings and that we too, as refugees, could do what others do.
"
Her coaches are unanimous: since 2016, the young athlete has only improved.
“
She has really improved.
The last time in Rio, she ran the 800m in 2 minutes 16 seconds, but I think this time she can do it in 2:03 or 2:06
”hopes Joseph Domongole, who will leave with the team in Tokyo .
“
Rose is a very good athlete, her training is going well.
She is well prepared now.
She has confidence in herself.
She is very positive by nature, about everything.
I have faith in her and I know that she can even bring us back a medal!
», Adds coach Sarah Kiwanuka.
Training complicated by the health crisis
However, the training was not easy. Following sanitary measures in Kenya, the Ngong center remained closed until April. Rose Nathike Lokonyen was then forced to return to Kakuma, which hampered her training. But the South Sudanese woman is not easily discouraged. Positive, she even says she is ready for Tokyo.
Very humble, she does not speak easily of herself. She does not spontaneously evoke, for example, her participation in the world championships in Doha in 2019, where she nevertheless recorded her personal best over 800 meters: 2 minutes 13. Instead, she prefers to defend the cause of refugees: “
Become a athlete changed my life and made me who I am today. So now I want to give back, especially to young refugees. I hope to instill in them hope, that they can have as examples all the refugees who participated in the Olympic Games.
"
So, since her selection in Rio, Rose Nathike Lokonyen has been holding numerous conferences around the world.
When we talk to her about the post-competition, she has only one idea in mind: to promote sport among refugees, so that others can follow her path.
►Also read: Report - In Kenya, a team of refugees trains for the Tokyo Olympics
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2020 Olympics
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