The International Olympic Committee offers Dominic Lokinyomo Lobalu another way to compete in the Olympics.
In the colors of Switzerland, he won gold in the men’s 10,000 meters at the European Championships in Rome last week Dominic Lokinyomo Lobalu may not represent country at the Paris Olympics.
The situation is because Lobalu is not a Swiss citizen. Lobalu was allowed to represent Switzerland at the European Championships, where he applied for asylum in 2019, but the rules of the International Olympic Committee do not allow the country to be represented at the Olympics without citizenship.
Nowadays, Lobalu has a residence permit for the alpine country. He was born in what is now South Sudan in 1998 and fled the civil war at the age of nine to a refugee camp in Kenya.
– I grew up in a refugee camp, so I never got citizenship. I was not allowed to feel that I belonged to a nation. The camp became my home. Now I have a new home in Switzerland. They have given me every opportunity, Lobalu said.
South Sudan became independent in 2011, when Lobalu had already left the country. The top runner is not interested in representing the country.
– Could I run to the country that took everything from me? A country that I have not had contact with for 16 years and has one of the worst humanitarian crises,” Lobalu said to the Run site last year.
Instead of representing Switzerland, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) offers Lobalu the opportunity to compete on the refugee team.
– According to our rules, he cannot represent Switzerland. I want to emphasize that he can still compete in Paris. It is entirely up to him, the IOC representative Mark Adams said.
Which team of refugees?
The IOC refugee team offers refugees the opportunity to compete in the Olympics.
The refugee team participated in the Olympics for the first time in 2016, when there were ten athletes in its ranks. 29 athletes participated in Tokyo.
There are 36 athletes in the team named to Paris, and Lobalu can be the 37th if he wants. The team has not yet reached the medals in the ring races, but that is now the goal.
It is even more important to give visibility to the more than 100 million refugees on Earth.
– You enrich our Olympic community and our societies. By participating, you show a model of perseverance. At the same time, you are making billions of people aware of the scale of the refugee crisis, IOC President Thomas Bach said in May.