Dominic Lobalu: The refugee team athlete running for Olympic glory
The elite runner, originally from South Sudan, has overcome years of adversity to become a decorated sportsman. Ahead of a new documentary ‘To Chase a Dream’, he talks to Ben Bloom about representing stateless migrants and going for the top prize
These days, Dominic Lobalu lives by himself in Switzerland, has his own income, the ability to pay his own rent and buy his own food without requiring the charity of others. It is, understandably, something he is fiercely proud of. In so many ways, his life is now no different from the vast majority of athletes competing at these Paris Olympics.
But, without a nation to represent, he remains officially stateless; an elite runner who has forged a new life that bureaucracy cannot quite permit.
So, when asked if he would like to represent the Refugee Olympic Team at the Paris Games, his response was to wonder: “Why not? I have been one of them before. I grew up with them and nothing will change me from them.”
It is not, he admits, the ideal scenario. If he could choose, he would compete in the red of Switzerland, his adopted home country for whom he won two medals at the recent European Championships. At that competition, he was accepted as Swiss; here in Paris, he is considered stateless. Like so many aspects of Lobalu’s story, it is not straightforward.
His tale began almost 26 years ago in the remote village of Chukudum, in what would later become South Sudan. Lobalu was nine when he lost his parents in the brutal civil war that preceded independence from Sudan, prompting him to flee with his four sisters to neighbouring Kenya.
Quickly separated from his siblings, he ended up in an orphanage north of Nairobi, and was later offered a place at the nearby Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation – an athletics training camp that forms the basis of the Athlete Refugee Team, which competes at various international competitions.
He represented them over 1,500m at the 2017 London World Championships, only managing to beat a single runner, who had tripped and fallen. But two years later, he took the sudden decision to abscond from the team in Geneva after competing in a 10km road race.
Part of Lobalu’s coping mechanism – the way he has so successfully been able to create a new existence for himself in Europe – is not to dwell on what has been and gone. “I don’t see the past,” he explains. “I only see the future. I have to forget it and don’t want to remind myself of all the things I went through.”
Details from that time are thus in short supply. It is known that his reason for leaving was partly due to discontent in the athletics camp and partly in search of a better life. But when he walked out of the team hotel with no money and only the clothes he was wearing, he had no idea what lay ahead.
He eventually found himself in the Swiss city of St Gallen, placed in an apartment with two fellow asylum seekers and put in touch with Markus Hagmann, a secondary school teacher and part-time athletics coach, who would identify and mould a rare gem.
By 2022, Lobalu was ready to be unleashed against the best in the world, winning a 3,000m race at the Stockholm Diamond League and clocking a half-marathon time that remains faster than the European record. He also managed to become the first professional refugee runner.
I wanted to be the first refugee to win a medal – that was my dream when I started running. Now they give me the chance back so it’s up to me to use it
Yet still he remained unable to race at international competitions until, finally, in May this year, World Athletics informed him he could represent Switzerland at championships under their jurisdiction. Just a few weeks later he won 10,000m gold and 5,000m bronze for his new nation at the European Championships.
“That was great – an amazing feeling,” he says. “I was really happy when they gave me the chance to be one of them and run under them, and so happy to bring two medals home. My dream was to have international medals.
“But it’s not enough. My big dream hasn’t happened yet so I’m still working hard on it. To get those two medals is the first step but I need more and more.”
The realisation of that big dream relies on making the Olympic podium and, no sooner had World Athletics said one thing, than the International Olympic Committee determined the exact opposite.
Working under different rules from the athletics’ governing body, the Olympic organisers confirmed Lobalu remained ineligible for Switzerland. Instead, they said he could temporarily rejoin the refugee team at Paris 2024 if he desired.
“It was a shock to receive the invite but I was preparing without it because you never know,” says Lobalu, whose story has been immortalised in a new documentary To Chase a Dream released this week. “I had to be ready. Although I was wishing to represent the Swiss, I’m happy to represent the refugees. It is what it is. I have to accept it and go for it.
“I wanted to be the first refugee to win a medal – that was my dream when I started running. Now they give me the chance back so it’s up to me to use it.”
Continuing to train under the watchful eye of Hagmann and the wider Swiss support staff in Paris, he remains adamant that he can achieve his ultimate goal of making the podium: “What do the guys who win have that I don’t have? We have the same training, we run the same distance, we sleep the same way. So why not? Those are the things I ask myself. Anything is possible.”
If he does, it will be “for all the refugees in the world, but with Switzerland in my heart. It’s where I finally feel at home.”
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