Tegla Loroupe

Tegla Loroupe

Medal record
Women's athletics
Competitor for  Kenya
World Championships
	1995 Gothenburg	10,000 m
	1999 Seville	10,000 m
World Half Marathon Championships
	1997 Košice	Individual
	1998 Zürich	Individual
	1998 Zürich	Team
	1999 Palermo	Individual
	1999 Palermo	Team
	1997 Košice	Team

Tegla Chepkite Loroupe (born 9 May 1973 in Kutomwony, Kenya) is a Kenyan long-distance track and road runner. She is also a global spokeswoman for peace, women's rights and education.

Loroupe holds the world records for 20, 25 and 30 kilometres and previously held the world marathon record. She is the three-time World Half-Marathon champion. Loroupe was also the first woman from Africa to win the New York City Marathon, which she has won twice. She has won marathons in London, Boston, Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Berlin, Rome, and many of other cities.

Biography

Tegla Loroupe was born in Kutomwony village in the Lelan division of West Pokot District. It is situated in the Rift Valley, approximately 600 kilometres north of Nairobi. Her father and mother are from the Pokot tribe, a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting parts of northern Kenya, eastern Uganda and southern Ethiopia.

Loroupe grew up with 24 siblings. The Pokots being a polygamous culture, her father had four wives. She spent her childhood working fields, tending cattle and looking after younger brothers and sisters.

At the age of six, Loroupe started school at Kapsait Elementary school; she had to run ten kilometres to and from school every morning. At school, she became aware of her potential as an athlete when she won races held over a distance of 800 or 1500 metres against students much older again. She decided to pursue a career as a runner. However, except for her mother, she was not supported by anyone.

Loroupe in 2007 at a meet in Schortens, Germany.

The Kenyan athletics federation, Athletics Kenya, did not support her at first, thinking Loroupe too small and too thin. However, after she won a prestigious cross country barefoot race in 1988, this changed. She began to train to compete internationally the following year, earning her first pair of running shoes in 1989, which she wore only for particularly rough races. She was nominated for the junior race of the 1989 IAAF World Cross Country Championships finishing 28th. She competed again at the 1990 IAAF World Cross Country Championships, finishing 16th in the junior race.

In 1994 and 1998, Loroupe won the Goodwill Games over 10,000 metres, barefoot. Over the same distance she won bronze medals at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics 1995 and 1999.

In 1994, Loroupe ran her first major marathon in New York. Running against the world's strongest competition, she won. As a consequence she was idolised by many young people in Africa: at last, a woman champion to complement the many successful male runners. She won the New York City Marathon again in 1995 and finished 3rd in 1998.

Between 1997 and 1999, she won three world titles a row over the half marathon distance. She won Rotterdam Marathon three times between 1997 and 1999. She won Berlin Marathon in 1999 and finished second in 2001. She finished second at the 1999 Osaka International Ladies Marathon.

Loroupe won the Zevenheuvelenloop 15K race in the Netherland three times (1992, 1993 and 1998). She is a seven-time Egmond Half Marathon winner (1993–1998, 2000). She has won the Lisbon Half Marathon a record six times: 1994–1997, 1999 and 2000.^[1] She has won the Tilburg road race, a five times (1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 1999), also a record number. She won the Paris Half Marathon in 1994 and 1998,^[2] City-Pier-City Loop half marathon in the Hague in 1998,^[3] and the Parelloop 10K in race in the Netherlands in 1999^[4]

During the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, favoured to win both the marathon and the 10,000 meters, she suffered from violent food poisoning the night before the race. Nevertheless, she fought through the marathon race, finishing 13th, then, the next day, ran the 10,000 metres, finishing 5th, running barefoot in both races, a feat she later stated she achieved out of a sense of duty to all the people taking her as a bearer of hope in her home country. Until the end of 2001, she continued to suffer from various health problems.

In 2000 she won London Marathon and Rome City Marathon. She also won Lausanne Marathon in 2002, Cologne Marathon in 2003 and Leipzig Marathon in 2004.

Loroupe competed at the 2005 World Championships marathon race in Helsinki, Finland, but finished only 40th. In February 2006 she won the Hong Kong Half-Marathon. The same year she finished 5th in the Rotterdam Marathon and 2nd in the Venice Marathon. In 2007 she participated again the New York City Marathon, finishing 8th.

Loroupe's biggest successes include world records over 20, 25 and 30 kilometres as well as the past record over the marathon distance. She used to hold the One Hour running World record of 18,340 m set in Borgholzhausen, Germany, but the record was broken by Dire Tune of Ethiopia ten years later, in 2008 (new record 18,517 m).^[5]

Goodwill

In 2006, she was named a United Nations Ambassador of Sport by Secretary General Kofi Annan, together with Roger Federer, tennis champion from Switzerland, Elias Figueroa, Latin American soccer legend from Chile, and Katrina Webb paralympics gold medalist from Australia. She is an International Sports Ambassador for the IAAF, the International Association of Athletics Federations, and for UNICEF.

In 2003, Loroupe created an annual series of Peace Marathons sponsored by the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation "Peace Through Sports". Presidents, Prime Ministers, Ambassadors and government officials run with warriors and nomadic groups in her native Kenya, in Uganda and in Sudan, to bring peace to an area plagued by raiding warriors from battling tribes. In 2010 the Kenyan Government lauded her achievements as hundreds of warriors had laid down their weapons.^[6]

She has established a school (Tegla Loroupe Peace Academy) and orphanage for children from the region in Kapenguria, a high-mountain town in north-west Kenya.

The 2006 Peace Marathon was held on 18 November 2006, in Kapenguria, Kenya. Two thousand warriors from six tribes competed. The next Peace Marathon is 15 November 2008 in Kapenguria, Kenya. Many ambassadors to Kenya are expected, together with the Prime Minister, and several Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan Ministers.

In February 2007, she was named the Oxfam Ambassador of Sport and Peace to Darfur. In December 2006, she travelled with George Clooney, Joey Cheek, and Don Cheadle to Beijing, Cairo, and New York on a diplomatic mission to bring an end to violence in Darfur. She won the "Community Hero" category at the 2007 Kenyan Sports Personality of the Year awards.^[7]

Tegla Loroupe is today a member of the 'Champions for Peace' club, a group of 54 famous elite athletes committed to serving peace in the world through sport, created by Peace and Sport, a Monaco-based international organisation.^[8]

As reported by Olympic news outlet Around the Rings, the IOC recognised six women, five from each continent and one to represent the world, for their achievements and their work to promote women's sport. Loroupe was awarded the world trophy.

In 2015 Tegla became an Ambassador for the Homeless World Cup.^[9]

International competitions

Year	Competition	Venue	Position	Notes
Representing  Kenya
1992	Olympic Games	Barcelona, Spain	17th	10,000 m
1993	World Championships	Stuttgart, Germany	4th	10,000 m
1995	World Championships	Gothenburg, Sweden	3rd	10,000 m
1996	Olympic Games	Atlanta, United States	6th	10,000 m
1997	World Half Marathon Championships	Košice, Slovakia	1st	Individual
			2nd	Team
	World Championships	Gothenburg, Sweden	6th	10,000 m
1998	World Half Marathon Championships	Zürich, Switzerland	1st	Individual
			1st	Team
1999	World Half Marathon Championships	Palermo, Italy	1st	Individual
			1st	Team
	World Championships	Seville, Spain	3rd	10,000 m
2000	Olympic Games	Sydney	13th	Marathon
			5th	10,000 m
2005	World Championships	Helsinki, Finland	40th	Marathon

Marathons

Year	Competition	Venue	Position	Notes
1994	New York City Marathon	New York City, United States	1st	Marathon
1995	New York City Marathon	New York City, United States	1st	Marathon
1997	Rotterdam Marathon	Rotterdam, Netherlands	1st	Marathon
1998	Rotterdam Marathon	Rotterdam, Netherlands	1st	Marathon
1998	New York City Marathon	New York City, United States	3rd	Marathon
1999	Rotterdam Marathon	Rotterdam, Netherlands	1st	Marathon
2000	London Marathon	London, England	1st	Marathon
2002	Lausanne Marathon	Lausanne, Switzerland	1st	Marathon

References

1. Lisbon Half Marathon winners
2. Paris Half Marathon – List of Winners
3. City-Pier-City Half Marathon – List of winners
4. Arrs.net: List of Parelloop winners
5. IAAF, 12 June 2008: Robles 12.87 World Record in Ostrava! – IAAF World Athletics Tou
6. Obare, Osinde (14 November 2010). "Loroupe seduces 700 Pokot warriors to give up guns for peace". The Standard. Retrieved 21 November 2010.
7. SOYA Awards – 2007 winners
8. Peace and Sport
9. https://www.homelessworldcup.org/ambassador/tegla-loroupe/

External links

• Tegla Loroupe profile at IAAF
• Biography of Tegla Laroupe at Biography Online
• Sports-reference.com profile
• Marathoninfo profile
• Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation "Peace Through Sports"