Profile | Tokyo 2020: who is ‘Mama’ Tegla Loroupe? Growing up amid conflict and hardship makes ex-runner ideal mother figure for Olympic refugees
- The former marathon world record-holder realised early in her career that refugee athletes were denied the freedom to compete, so she vowed to help them
- The 48-year-old was chef de mission for IOC Refugee Olympic Team in 2016 and will repeat her role in Tokyo when she marches with squad at opening ceremony
Tegla Loroupe only knew of the danger once she arrived at the refugee camp in Dadaab, about 480km northeast of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, close to Somalia.
She was not safe, security at the UNHCR facility told her, and she must return to Nairobi immediately. They said that during her eight-hour drive to Dadaab, on a perilous road patrolled by various militant groups, a vehicle following hers was ambushed by unknown gunmen and a UN teacher kidnapped.
Loroupe, the IOC Refugee Olympic Team’s chef de mission and former marathon world record-holder, rushed back with several athletes from the Dadaab camp selected for further training at her Peace Foundation.
But there was more grim news. Terrorists had entered the Garissa University campus 370km east of Nairobi on April 2, 2015, and killed 148 people, mostly students. Loroupe said a nephew of her mother’s was among the victims. She was helping to finance his studies.
Conflict, hardship and suffering have long been part of Loroupe’s years growing up in northern Kenya’s Turkana county near the restive South Sudan border. Indeed, her own experiences and the misery she encounters as a peace activist are driving forces in her quest to help displaced people, making her the ideal role model and mother figure for the 29 athletes who will march at the Tokyo Games opening ceremony as members of the second IOC Refugee Olympic Team.