Tokyo Olympian Tachlowini Gabriyesos will lead a six-member Athlete Refugee Team (ART) to next month’s World Athletics Championships Oregon22.
Gabriyesos, 24, made waves one year ago when he finished 16th in the Olympic marathon in Sapporo, beating some of the world’s best marathoners.
Gabriyesos fled conflict and bloodshed in Eritrea at age 12 and journeyed through Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt before crossing the Sinai desert on foot to Israel where he’s been living since 2010. He began running soon after and eventually found that he was best suited for athletics’ longest running event.
At the Hahula Galilee Marathon in Israel in March 2021, Gabriyesos clocked 2:10:55 to become the first refugee athlete to meet an Olympic qualifying standard. He later served as the co-flag bearer for the Olympic Refugee Team at Tokyo’s Opening Ceremonies. After his solid performance in Sapporo’s hot and muggy conditions, Gabriyesos improved to 2:10:09 at the Seville Marathon in February.
After its involvement with the inaugural Refugee Olympic Team that competed at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, World Athletics established the Athlete Refugee Team in 2017 to provide refugees with high level training and competitive opportunities. It is the world’s only year-round team composed solely of refugee athletes. The team has been represented at almost every World Championship event since, in addition to a growing number of continental and regional events, most recently the European 10,000m Cup in May and the African Championships earlier this month.