Refugee Olympic Team on a mission to storm the medal party in Japan

NAIROBI - Some 11,091 athletes from around the world are expected to feature at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, in what will be the 32nd running of the biggest multi-sport event on the planet.

While most eyes will be fixed on the battle for medals from representatives of 206 International Olympics Committee (IOC) members, special attention will be focused on a group of 29 athletes competing under the Refugee Olympic Team (EOR) banner.

Four of these special entrants have been training under former world women marathon record holder Tegla Loroupe, who is also the Chef de Mission for the EOR.

On June 8, IOC President Thomas Bach announced the final squad for Tokyo 2020 that was selected from 56 promising refugee athletes drawn from 13 countries, marking the second Summer Games the EOR will feature.

Six EOR athletes will be returning to the Summer Games after the squad first made its debut at Rio 2016 as a group of 10.

Loroupe, a retired champion distance runner and acclaimed Global Peace Ambassador, has been training the four EOR runners in Ngong Hills, located southwest of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

The quartet is part of the refugee athletes who call the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation (TLPF) camp in Ngong home.

Rose Lokonyen, Paulo Lokoro, James Nyang Chiengjiek and Anjelina Lohalith - all from South Sudan- are gearing up for their second Olympics under the watchful eye of Loroupe, who retired from her champion distance running career to become a global peace ambassador.

Lokonyen, who made history in Rio when she carried the EOR flag on her maiden appearance, is keen on improving on her two minutes and 16.64 seconds performance in the women's 800m that saw her finish seventh in her heat and fail to progress to the semifinals.

"I'm hoping to improve on my time and also to wish all the best to my colleagues. At least we can do something at Tokyo 2020," Lokonyen told Chinese TV network CGTN Africa.

Like all other athletes around the world, the EOR team was hit by the pandemic when lockdown measures were introduced in Kenya in March last year.

But unlike their counterparts who compete under their national flags, Lokonyen and her peers were forced to relocate from their Ngong camp to the sprawling Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya, the largest settlement for displaced persons in sub-Saharan Africa.

This saw the group completely cut off from their coaches and training regimen in what was a big blow to their ambitions and fitness.

However, they took the setback in their stride to keep their Olympics dream alive.

Their coaches sent them programs to use in training unsupervised before they sent back the results for their tacticians in Nairobi to review their progress and establish whether they had done things in the right way.

"It was not that easy, but we thank God that we have come up to this far and we continue to move on," Chiengjiek remarked.

The easing of lockdown measures in November 2020 in Kenya came as a relief as they were allowed to return to Ngong and reunite with their coaches as well as suitable terrain to gain fitness.

Now, the quartet are eager to joining the rest of the EOR in Tokyo, among them Brazilian-based judoka Popole Misenga from the DRC and Iranian-born Kimia Alizadeh Zenozi, who took bronze in the Under-57kg taekwondo category in Rio before defecting in 2020, to live and train in Germany.

Lokoro, a men's 1,500m runner, believes the current crop of EOR are better conditioned to make an impact in Tokyo as opposed to Rio since they have been training for the Games in earnest since 2019.

To him, the pandemic could turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

"At least this year when we opened camp, we caught up and our training is going on well. We can see ourselves going far," Lokoro added.

Loruope, who is returning to Tokyo in her EOR Chef de Mission role, maintains expanding the team from 10 to 29 has increased their chances of winning a historic first medal.

"We will not miss a medal especially with Popole and Zenozi in the squad," the former three-time world half marathon winner said.

The four members of the EOR in Kenya will travel to Dubai to join the rest of the squad before making the journey to Japan to pursue history at the games that run from July 23 to August 8.

The EOR will be represented across athletics, badminton, boxing, canoeing, cycling, judo, karate, taekwondo, shooting, swimming, weightlifting and wrestling in Tokyo.