Anjelina Nadai is a Sudanese refugee: she fled her country when she was seven years old and she has just won her first international race not by representing a country, but as a member of the Refugee Olympic team. It’s a first for her, and it’s a first for this team of which no athlete had yet won a competition.
A few days ago in Spain, in Castellon, for the European Cup of Cross-Country Champion Clubs, Anjelina Nadai therefore swallowed the five laps of an 8.7km course with the best time, 27 minutes, winning thus his place at the top of the podium and the European title.
“I was very movedshe told the Spanish daily El Pais, because all my life I wanted to win a medal, I believed in myself, in my efforts, I did the best I could and I succeeded.” And Anjelina Nadai adds that the key to her determination is that she does not forget everything she wears. She is 28 today, but she was just a child when, in In the midst of the Sudanese civil war, her parents entrusted her to her aunt so that she would leave the country, far from the fighting, the famine and the dead. As with the vast majority of refugees, she and her aunt did not not crossed the planet, they went to the closest, the Kakuma refugee camp in neighboring Kenya.
Take part in Paris 2024 and run for all refugees
It was in 2002. 20 years later, South Sudan is an independent state, but it is on the verge of famine, and still in the midst of a crisis of refugees who are, according to UN figures, 2 .3 million to live in camps in Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan and Kenya. “With thatexplains Anjelina Nadainobody, neither my parents nor the Sudanese society understands why me, a woman and a refugee, I run, but I don’t care, running gives me hope, and helps me to leave the pain behind me.”
The first time she set off was on her way to school, barefoot, to let off steam, then she took part in her first races, her first tournaments, until she was selected to join the refugee Olympic team created for the 2016 Olympics. She has therefore participated in two Olympiads, Rio and Tokyo in 2020, and is now targeting Paris, where, medal or not, she says that the important thing, “Cis to be there to represent all the refugees, they are what I think of when I run, they are in my heart and in my head and they push me.”