She escaped hunger and destruction to be the first champion of the Olympic Refugee Team

Kakuma is one of the most important refugee camps in the world. Born in 1992 in northern Kenya, it is estimated that close to 200,000 people of 20 different nationalities live and from South Sudan, in 2002, Anjelina Nadai Lohalith arrived with her aunt to escape the civil war. Two decades later, that eight-year-old girl became the first athlete from the Refugee Olympic Team to win an international race.

In Oropesa del Mar, Castellón, Spain, the European Cross Country Club Championship was held and Lohalith made history. “This victory is a very important incentive,” said the representative of the Alley Runners Club in Tel Aviv after crossing the 8.7 kilometers in a time of 27 minutes and 55 seconds. The podium was completed by Spain’s Irene Sánchez-Escribano and Kenyan Fancy Cherono.

Anjelina escaped war and devastation. She slept in the middle of the weeds and in a town surrounded by landmines. “Everything was destroyed, hunger was a big problem and it still is,” she recalled in an interview with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) before participating in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. At that time, she had not yet been reunited with her family.

Lohalith arrived in Kakuma at the age of eight and began running “for fun” at school until they realized that she could go one step further: in 2015, one of her teachers told her that she should participate in a 10km competition organized by the Tegla Loroupe Foundation.

It changed her sporting life. Anjelina was selected, began training in Ngong (outside Nairobi, the capital of Kenya) with the Foundation that is supported by the International Olympic Committee and participated with the Refugee Athletes Team of Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2022.

“I am very happy because for the first time refugees will be represented at the Olympic Games. I am very happy. I will be able to travel and meet the athletes. Going to Rio will allow me to meet and relate to different people, learn and discover new places,” Anjelina said before her first great Olympic experience and she dreamt: “If I go far, train and succeed, my only dream is to help my parents.”

In 2002, the war in Sudan forced Anjelina to separate from her family and only in 2021, after the Tokyo Games, was the expected reunion with her parents, who at that time were also grandparents because the runner has a 5-year-old son.

“I don’t see my son and parents too often because I aim to improve even more at the Olympic Games in Paris next year,” she said in an interview with World Athletics.

Aiming to reach her third Olympic Game, Lohalith made the decision to bet on the longest races despite the fact that in the last World Athletics Championship in Oregon her best mark fell by more than 10 seconds in the 1500 meters, a competition in which she participated in Rio and Tokyo.

“Last year it was difficult to reach the semifinals of the 1500′s. After the World Cup, I returned to Kenya and began to work harder towards my goal of succeeding as a long-distance runner. I train hard all week, I just train and sleep. Even during Christmas, when all the athletes from the camp traveled back home, I stayed at the camp just to train,” said the Sudan-born after winning in Spain.

Anjelina is one of the athletes who make up the mentoring program of the ‘Sport at the Service of Humanity’ Foundation and was also part of the Olympism in Action Forum at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires 2018.

The Olympic Team of Refugee Athletes (EOR) participated for the first time with 10 athletes in the Rio 2016 Games, while in Tokyo 2020 that number rose to 29. Now, 52 people receive a scholarship from the International Olympic Committee to train and seek qualification for Paris 2024.

Angelina Nadai Lohalith, that girl who survived the war in Sudan and started running for fun while she was studying, is clear about the path to the finish line: “The moment I returned home I promised myself that I would train hard because I always dreamed of being a winner.”