Rose Nathike Lokonyen, athletics (800 m), South Sudan
Rose Nathike Lokonyen, 23, escaped the violence of war going on in South Sudan along with her family in 2002, and arrived in Kakuma refugee camp, in Kenya. Though her parents later went back to their native country, she stayed in Kenya with her siblings, and started to train as a short distance runner in Nairobi.
Once selected to train as a professional with the Tegla Loroupe Foundation, she competed against other refugees. “Some of us were running without shoes,” she recalls, “like me, I was running barefoot… We ran 10 km, and I came second.”