Featured Athlete: Lopez Lomong

By his own account, Beijing 2008 Olympic Games 1,500-meter runner and opening-ceremony flag-bearer Lopez Lomong lived a happy life as a young child in Sudan.  Like most six-year-olds, Lomong spent his days playing with friends and being taken care of by his parents, blissfully unaware of the dangerous civil war going on in his home country.  On most Sundays he would attend mass with his parents. The reality of the Darfur conflict, however, was thrust into his family’s lives on one particular Sunday.

After the militia invaded his open-air church, Lomong and the rest of the children were separated from their families and imprisoned for three weeks in a room with no windows.  Lomong and the other children subsisted on little more than water and bits of grain picked out of “sand sandwiches.”  During the third week, some of the older boys discovered a hole in the fence and decided to take their chances escaping.  Despite soldiers in pursuit, Lomong and some of the other boys managed to evade capture and, after days of running, found themselves in Kenya. 

Lomong resided in a refugee camp in Kenya for ten years as one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan.”  Lomong and his fellow refugees in the camp ate one meal at night—there was only enough food available for one meal every day—and played soccer during the day to distract themselves from their hunger.  During the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Lomong walked five miles to watch Michael Johnson run on a black-and-white television.  Johnson’s Olympic performance made Lomong decide that he, too, would become a runner. 

One year later, he had the chance to write an essay about what he would strive to accomplish if allowed to immigrate to the United States.  The American officials reading through the essays were moved by his story and allowed him to come to the U.S., where he lived with a foster family in Tully, N.Y. 

Lomong attended high school in the U.S., then went on to become a star runner at Northern Arizona University.  At Northern Arizona, he was an all-American and won titles in both NCAA Indoor 3,000-meter and NCAA Outdoor 1,500-meter.  

Becoming an American citizen in July 2007 is one of what Lomong considers to be the greatest moments of his life.  Shortly after that moment, he earned a spot on the Beijing Olympic Team in the 1,500-meter event.  To top off his Olympic experience, his Team USA teammates voted to make him their flag-bearer for the Opening Ceremony, declaring him a great representative of the Olympic Movement and an inspiration to others.

Lopez is a firm believer in the Olympic Movement and the ideals that it entails.  "It's not only the sport," Lomong said prior to competing in Beijing, "You have to have sportsmanship to compete. If I lose a race right now, I don't put my head down and say it's the end of the world, I always use that as my encouragement and to do the best the next day."  Despite hamstring problems during the Games, Lomong left with his positive attitude intact and thoroughly enjoyed his experience.  In fact, he was already looking to the future, “I'm thinking 2012, 2016 and 2020,” he said, “Those are my games right there.” 

Lomong has always made it a priority to take time out of his busy training and travel schedule to give back to the people and communities that have helped him along his Olympic journey.  He has used his position as a platform for helping others.  Not only is he a member of Team Darfur, a coalition of athletes determined to bring about an end to the ongoing conflict in Sudan, but he has also opened a school in Sudan to help the children whose educations have been hurt by the civil war.  He supplies the school with donations of uniforms and shoes and has even returned to Sudan to visit the school and give messages of encouragement to the students.

Lomong says he is far from being done; rather, he is only beginning.  After Beijing, instead of focusing on what he had already accomplished, his eyes were fixed on the future.

“There are more dreams to be achieved.”