<p><br />Nine years ago, Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed spent three days crossing the Sinai Desert on foot from Egypt to Israel, the tail end of a treacherous journey from his home in Sudan&rsquo;s war-ravaged Darfur region. Since then, he&rsquo;s worked his way onto a doorstep that could lead him to next year&rsquo;s Tokyo Olympic Games.</p>
<p>That odyssey is largely due to the Alley Runners, an athletics club in Tel Aviv which was founded specifically to help people much like Mohammed.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I started running with them, and I'm running at the World Championships,&rdquo; Mohammed said a year ago when he made his Athlete Refugee Team debut at the World Cross Country Championships. He later represented the squad at the World Athletics Championships in Doha. &ldquo;This club means a lot to me, they are like my family. They've done everything to help make my dream come true.&rdquo;</p>
<h3>Club origins? A friendly bet</h3>
<p>And it all began as a bet. The formation of the club, that is, according to one of its three founders, Shirith Kasher. She and a friend, both runners, were discussing youth participation in sport and a question arose: why weren&rsquo;t young girls from Israel&rsquo;s Ethiopian immigrant community participating in athletics? Her friend said the interest wasn&rsquo;t there; Kasher insisted it was opportunity that didn&rsquo;t exist.</p>
<p>Eager to prove her point, she went in search of a team to establish a club that would specifically target young people in Tel Aviv&rsquo;s disadvantaged communities. A few months later she crossed paths with Rotem Genosar, a high school civics teacher and avid basketball player, and Yuval Carmi, a runner and coach.</p>
<p>&ldquo;So we established the team because we thought it was a nice opportunity to give underprivileged kids the opportunity to practice athletics,&rdquo; Kasher says. &ldquo;It was small at first - we didn&rsquo;t know that it was going to grow like it has.&rdquo;</p>
<p>At first they targeted girls from Tel Aviv&rsquo;s Ethiopian community, but interest in the club forced a quick expansion in focus.</p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZW9K0dH8NWI" width="500" height="288" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>&ldquo;That lasted for two months because boys were coming as well. So, of course we also gave the boys a chance,&rdquo; Kasher says. &ldquo;We knew then we had something good in our hands because we saw and knew that there were kids, who nobody really looks to in Israel, that were pretty talented and very serious.&rdquo;</p>
<p>That was in 2012. Just over nine years later, the membership has mushroomed from those 40 south Tel Aviv teenagers to 90 today, with members ranging in age from 10 to 40. Most are Ethiopian Jews who immigrated to Israel in recent years but about 20 percent of the club is made up of refugees and asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea and Darfur.</p>
<p>Success came quickly.</p>
<p>Since its founding, more than a dozen athletes have gone on to represent Israel in regional and European competitions.</p>
<p>Most recently, in 2019, Mohammed represented the Athlete Refugee Team at two World Athletics championships and Adisu Guadia, who is now 17, raced to 3000m gold at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Baku in July and capped the season with a victory in the U19 race at the Balkan Cross Country Championships in November. The U20 men's squad finished third at the European Club Cross Country Championships in February, a U18 boys team won the Israeli national cross country title and a U16 girls squad was second at the national U16 Athletics League championships.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Adisu Guadia with his European Youth Olympic Festival gold medal</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Yet despite those successes, there are no tryouts. &ldquo;If you are serious and come to practice, you have a place in our team,&rdquo; Carmi says.</p>
<h3>Educational component is key</h3>
<p>But Genosar is also quick to point out that success on the track is only part of the larger driving force behind the Alley Runners. Another is an educational component that&rsquo;s been there from the start, and it too is growing. Three years ago the club obtained the use of a small house that is used specifically as a home-like learning centre where members regularly meet to study English, math and humanities.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We are welcoming everybody into the club but we know that only a few can or will become professional athletes,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;So for us other aspects are very important - the social and educational aspects. The learning centre is a place where people come to study and fulfill their academic aspirations. And we can better follow their achievements in school.&rdquo; The most serious athletes, he says, have also become much more serious in the classroom.</p>
<p>Involvement in the club has been especially helpful to immigrants trying to assimilate and grow into their new environments.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We can see the change,&rdquo; Genosar says. &ldquo;Immigrants and asylum seekers who came to Israel with almost nothing, and because of the team and because of the education, managed to move themselves forward very quickly. In just five or six years they are in a very different situation in their lives.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Several athletes who joined the club in its early years are now enrolled in universities, an aspect that Genosar, as an educator, is especially proud of.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re very proud to have university students from this disadvantaged or underprivileged segment of society, where it&rsquo;s very hard to go to university. So we hope to develop that more.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Arsema Kahsay of the Alley Runners Athletics Club</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>One way is through a scholarship programme they&rsquo;re working to establish that will provide a route to university that allows student-athletes to continue training without having to work, something akin to the NCAA system in the US minus the team model. "There is nothing in Israel like that," Kasher says, adding that it&rsquo;s already borne fruit with their first scholarship student this year.</p>
<h3>Next up - getting through lockdown</h3>
<p>What&rsquo;s next? Trying to carry on under coronavirus lockdown, much like the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Restrictions on movement in Israel began about three weeks ago, confining people to areas 100 metres or less from their homes. Training is nonetheless continuing.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We're doing things on an individual level,&rdquo; Carmi says, &ldquo;where the person trains either by himself or with a friend or two, usually very, very early in the morning, near their house. It's difficult controlling everyone, but it's possible.</p>
<p>&ldquo;The bigger problem is the mental issue - there is no certain goal right now. It&rsquo;s training for the unknown.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Kasher said one thing she&rsquo;d like to do moving forward is to share their experience with communities in other parts of the world.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We'd love to offer our knowledge and experience to other communities who would be interested in starting similar clubs. We&rsquo;d love, for example, to have an Alley Runners-Berlin.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Are you listening, Berlin?</p>
<p><strong>Bob Ramsak for World Athletics</strong></p>

Nine years ago, Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed spent three days crossing the Sinai Desert on foot from Egypt to Israel, the tail end of a treacherous journey from his home in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region. Since then, he’s worked his way onto a doorstep that could lead him to next year’s Tokyo Olympic Games.

For Tel Aviv’s Alley Runners, success is measured both on and off the track

<p>A squad of six athletes represented the Athlete Refugee Team at the <strong>IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019</strong>, its biggest team to date at a World Athletics Series event, and quality-wise, its best.</p>
<h3>Big PB for Lokonyen</h3>
<p>The action began on the championships opening night with Rose Nathike Lokonyen, a member of the refugee team at the Olympic Games in 2016, who clocked 2:13.39 in her heat of the 800m, clipping more than three seconds from her previous career best set at the Rio Games.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I always want to improve my best time so I&rsquo;m happy I did that here,&rdquo; said Lokonyen, who served as the team&rsquo;s flag bearer in Rio. &ldquo;The pace was fast but I know that I have to keep on training hard.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Lokonyen, a refugee from South Sudan and now based at the Tegla Loroupe Training Camp for Refugee Athletes in Ngong, a town 28 kilometres from Nairobi, is splitting her time between training and her work towards a degree in business management at a college in the Kenyan capital. &ldquo;Sometimes it&rsquo;s difficult to train well with school and travel, but I must try.&rdquo;</p>
<p>This was the 24-year-old&rsquo;s second appearance at the World Championships - she also competed in London two years ago-- and is already looking ahead.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Now I&rsquo;m going back to begin preparing for Tokyo 2020.&rdquo;</p>
<h3>Mohammed and Gabriyesos tackle the 5000m..</h3>
<p>Later that evening, two squad members competed in the 5000m. In the first head Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed was making his first appearance at the World Athletics Championships.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Athlete Refugee Team member Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed at the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Mohammed, a native of Darfur now living and training in Israel, has improved steadily since his Athlete Refugee Team debut at the World Cross Country Championships Aarhus 2019, where he finished 85th among 140 finishers. He improved his 10,000m best to 28:47.36 in Tel Aviv in April, and to 13:54.28 in the 5000m in July.</p>
<p>Mohammed came to Doha directly from a month-long training camp in Ethiopia, via Tel Aviv, where he spent one night, and then onward to the Qatari capital via Istanbul. The latter was intended as a simple transit stop but an unanticipated visa delay forced him and teammate Tachlowini Gabriyesos to camp out at Istanbul airport for 27 hours. Finally arriving in Doha the day before the race, his body just wouldn&rsquo;t respond.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It was tough tonight,&rdquo; said Mohammed, who stayed with the lead group over the opening half of the race but then faded to finish well back in 14:15.32. &ldquo;My legs just couldn&rsquo;t get going.&rdquo;</p>
<p>He credited his progress in 2019 to several training stints at altitude in Ethiopia over the past eight months and looks forward to more next year as he prepares for the Tokyo Olympics.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to train six months in Ethiopia next year, spending more time at altitude, to continue improving,&rdquo; he said.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Athlete refugee team member Tachlowini Gabriyesos at the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Gabriyesos, who improved his personal best to 14:15.05 in July, struggled too, finishing his heat in 14:28.11. But the 21-year-old, who is also based in Tel Aviv but at a different club, was upbeat with his first Athlete Refugee Team appearance.</p>
<p>&ldquo;The competition was tough, but I will be stronger the next time,&rdquo; he said, with Mohammed serving as his interpreter. &ldquo;I know I&rsquo;m not at the top level but now I know what it&rsquo;s like to compete with and against the top level.&rdquo;</p>
<h3>..and two in the men&rsquo;s steeplechase</h3>
<p>Two team members competed in the 3000m steeplechase.</p>
<p>Otmane Nait Hammou, who also competed at the World Cross Country Championships in March, will remember his World Athletics Championships debut for its rough and tumble nature after getting caught up in a collision early in the race that forced several runners to fall to the track. He was one.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know where my mind was, I don&rsquo;t know how it happened,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But it happens, even to professionals. But I didn't give up. I said to myself, my goal is to finish and reach the finish line. I did believe in myself, even though I was very far from my PB.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Athlete Refugee Team member Otmane Nait Hammou in the 3000m steeplechase at the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>The native of Morocco who has been based between Sweden and France since 2015, clocked 8:58.71 in July. His race in Doha was just his fourth in the discipline.</p>
<p>His teammate Fouad Idbafdil, another Moroccan based in France who clocked a near lifetime best of 8:54.70 this year, struggled before dropping out of his heat, suffering from foot pain.</p>
<p>His teammate Fouad Idbafdil, another Moroccan based in France who clocked a near lifetime best of 8:54.70 this year, struggled before dropping out of his heat, suffering from foot pain.</p>
<h3>Slight injury slows Lokoro</h3>
<p>Paulo Amotun Lokoro, another member of the Rio team, arrived in Doha just a month after improving his 1500m best to 3:44.10. But he too struggled in his heat, slowed by hamstring pains.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I wanted to do my level best, but the pain caused a problem,&rdquo; said Lokoro, who is also based in the Ngong camp. &ldquo;I had a little hamstring pain so I had to reduce my pace.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Refugee Athlete Team member Paulo Amotun Lokoro at the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Lokoro has improved by nearly six seconds this year, and looks forward to moving to another level next year. Like Lokonyen, he too balances studies with training, but not for much longer. He&rsquo;ll be wrapping up his high school degree by the end of 2019.</p>
<p>&ldquo;When I finish, I will be more free and can focus more on training.&rdquo; Balancing the two, he said, isn&rsquo;t easy. &ldquo;Sometimes I train after school sometimes in the morning before school. But in two months I will be free to train full-time.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Lokoro was also making his first World Championships appearance, and savoured it for the lessons learned.</p>
<p>&ldquo;When I do something wrong or do something good, that is what I want to take out of any experiences, especially one like a world championship.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Those were sentiments echoed by each member of the squad who shared their appreciation to the IAAF for assisting them both with their athletics ambitions and for helping them put a face on, and give a voice to, refugees around the world.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I want to really thanks to IAAF for its support for the refugee team - to help us feel like human beings, not just refugees,&rdquo; Hammou said.</p>
<p>&ldquo;What I can tell my sisters and brothers all over the world is that in life, never give up,&rdquo; Lokonyen said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t lose hope. Because what others can do, a refugee person can also do. We are all human beings and we can do what others do. We can achieve our goals.&rdquo;</p>
<p><strong>Bob Ramsak for the IAAF</strong></p>

A squad of six athletes represented the Athlete Refugee Team at the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019, its biggest team to date at a World Athletics Series event, and quality-wise, its best.

Athlete Refugee Team fields a squad of six in Doha

<p>Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed knows more than most about crossing difficult terrain.</p>
<p>At the IAAF World Cross Country Championships Aarhus 2019, he reached the line 85<sup>th</sup> among 140 finishers on what was widely hailed as the most difficult course in the history of the championships.</p>
<p>"Oh god, that race was tough,&rdquo; said Mohammed, who was making his Athlete Refugee Team debut. &ldquo;It was really hard. I never saw a cross country like that in my life.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Eight years earlier, fleeing the violence of Sudan&rsquo;s war-ravaged Darfur region, Mohammed spent three days crossing the Sinai Desert from Egypt to Israel on foot, where he was eventually granted refugee protection. In between, that difficult terrain has led him from the edge of survival to life as a full-time athlete with Olympic aspirations.</p>
<h3>Leaving home</h3>
<p>The war in the western Sudanese province of Darfur broke out in February 2003, a genocidal campaign that would take the lives of hundreds of thousands and displace millions more. The humanitarian crisis lasts to this day.</p>
<p>That was the backdrop of Mohammed&rsquo;s formative years, one that impacted him directly on an autumn night in 2003 when members of the Janjaweed militia, a brutal faction aligned with the Sudanese army, raided Barde, Mohammed&rsquo;s village. The attack left 97 dead and much of the village burned to the ground. Among those slaughtered was Mohammed&rsquo;s father. Mohammed was barely ten at the time, but as the oldest of four siblings, it didn&rsquo;t take him long to feel a sense of responsibility for his family. With no end to the violence in sight, he decided in his early teens to leave as soon as the opportunity arose.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I told my mom I'm going to find a place to study to help my siblings,&rdquo; he recalls. &ldquo;And she said, 'No way, you are not going anywhere. You are too young'. But I said I had no choice.&rdquo; Authorities sided with his mother the first time he tried to flee the country, turning him back at the border. He eventually left in 2010 at 17.</p>
<p>Mohammed said he spent a week making his way north through Egypt and eventually to an area in the Sinai Desert near the Israeli border. Traveling in a group of four, he spent three days with a man the group hired to help them cross. That 72-hour guidance, a cramped tent to sleep in and some food cost each $US 200.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Athlete refugees Otmane Nait-Hammou and Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed in Aarhus with IAAF President Sebastian Coe</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&ldquo;I was lucky enough to cross then,&rdquo; Mohammed says, noting that construction of the Egypt&ndash;Israel border fence began later that year. &ldquo;Nobody gets through now.&rdquo;</p>
<p>His guide&rsquo;s duties were done when he left Mohammed about a kilometre from an Israeli army checkpoint. &ldquo;I didn't know Hebrew, I didn't know anybody there. So when I arrived I stopped.&rdquo;</p>
<h3>A new life</h3>
<p>At the border he was taken into custody, processed and sent to a holding camp. After about three weeks - &ldquo;I was there 17 days or 27 days, I'm not sure,&rdquo; he says - Mohammed was released and given a one-way ticket for a bus bound for Tel Aviv.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I didn't even know how or where to get out,&rdquo; he recalls, laughing as he recounts his first few hours in Israel&rsquo;s second largest city. &ldquo;I stayed on the bus for a couple hours, and then another bus came and I just followed some people out." He wound up in a park where Sudanese and other African migrants gravitated towards. &ldquo;Those with no other place to stay, stay there.&rdquo;</p>
<p>But he didn&rsquo;t stay there long. He was hired by a local man to work as a house painter and began to earn a meager living. &ldquo;I told him I didn&rsquo;t know how to paint. And the funny thing is, he said, &lsquo;I know you don&rsquo;t, but I will teach you&rsquo;. So he was very good to me.&rdquo; Just a few months after arriving, he was already able to begin supporting his mother, two brothers and a sister who were living in a refugee camp back home.</p>
<h3>Crossing paths with the Alley Runners</h3>
<p>He played some football as he settled into his new surroundings, but with talents more suited for running, his best friend suggested that he take up the sport with The Alley Runners, a local club founded in 2012 to provide athletics opportunities to young people in Tel Aviv&rsquo;s disadvantaged neighborhoods. The club has also welcomed migrants and asylum seekers to its ranks and has quickly become one of the most successful clubs in Israel.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Because we've gotten so good, people from other areas in Israel want to join,&rdquo; Rotem Genosar, the club&rsquo;s manager, said. &ldquo;If they are good, we say yes. But in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Tel Aviv and the area, we take everyone, no matter their talent.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The club currently has 90 athletes in its long distance programme, aged 14 to 35. The refugee group consists of up to 40 athletes, mostly from Eritrea and Darfur.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed at the 2019 European Cross Country Champion Clubs Cup in Albufeira</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&ldquo;They won't be in a world championship but this is the best programme for them,&rdquo; said Genosar, who teaches high school civics in the morning but manages the club &ldquo;around the clock&rdquo;. &ldquo;They work from six (in the morning) to five (in the afternoon) and then come to training. They feel good.&rdquo;</p>
<p>For Mohammed, who joined the Alley Runners in 2014, it was a perfect fit.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I started running with them, and now I'm running at the World Cross Country Championships, and maybe the World Championships. This team means a lot to me, they are like my family. They've done everything to help make my dream come true.&rdquo;</p>
<p>That extended second family has grown to include Bella, Rama, Hili and Asaf, owners of the building in which he lives and works. &ldquo;Hili&rdquo; is kind of like a mother to him, Mohammed says. &ldquo;She calls me twice a day to make sure that I&rsquo;m ok. I am so grateful to them.&rdquo;</p>
<p>At first, Mohammed said, running gave him a valuable and necessary break from the difficult grind of carving out a living on the margins of Tel Aviv.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I was working full-time - I didn't go to school because I left Sudan to help my siblings - and I was sending some little money to help my brother go to study.&rdquo; Joining the club was a rewarding personal outlet.</p>
<h3>Full-time athlete</h3>
<p>But as he settled into the longer distances, he gradually got better. By 2017, good enough to receive one of 46 Olympic Solidarity Scholarships awarded by the IOC since its Refugee Athlete Support programme began, providing a modest but crucial monthly stipend that helped Mohammmed make his move to the next level a little over a year ago, when he began a seven-day-a-week training regimen that's beginning to bear fruit.</p>
<p>Running for his Tel Aviv club, Mohammmed finished 40th in his European Cross Country Champion Clubs Cup debut in 2017, 30th in 2018 and 22nd in the 2019 edition on 3 February in Albufeira, Portugal. Nineteen days later he improved his road PB to 29:37 when he finished second in a 10km in Tel Aviv.</p>
<p>Then came his first international appearance in Aarhus. He was pleased, but makes it clear that he wasn&rsquo;t there as a tourist.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Members of the Alley Runners distance team at a training camp in Ethiopia</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&ldquo;Sure, I was a little bit happy, but not one hundred percent happy, but it was good. I was hoping to run faster.&rdquo;</p>
<p>A four-week altitude training stint in Addis Ababa followed before his next competition, the Israeli national 10,000m championship in Tel Aviv on 24 April. He made another solid improvement, finishing fifth in 28:47.36 to bust through the 29-minute barrier. It was a personal best that also solidified his chance of earning a spot on the Athlete Refugee Team for the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019. Inclusion there is based on performance, and the competition is growing more fierce year to year.</p>
<p>"Jamal has progressed through his four years of training mostly in terms of discipline and dedication, which allowed him to remain healthy and consistent," says his coach Yuval Carmi.</p>
<p>"He has always been strong mentally and he has a very positive attitude towards life and sports. This mentality also allows him to overcome obstacles and enjoy the hard training."</p>
<p>Carmi believes that if he stays healthy, Mohammed can break into the European top-ten in both cross country and on the track. "He was very satisfied with his first sub-29 but I still think that with better pacing he could have ran even faster."</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Mohammed is currently finishing up another four-week training camp at altitude in Ethiopia with one eye on October&rsquo;s World Championships and the other on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed after his 10,000m PB in Tel Aviv</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Mohammed said that he hopes to return home one day, but not yet.</p>
<p>"After there is peace, yeah, why not? When peace comes, I'll go see my family." In the meantime, he'll continue supporting them. "That&rsquo;s the most important thing." And so is his running.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I'm taking it seriously,&rdquo; Mohammed says. "Running is giving me the chance to compete, to travel, to improve my life and help my family. If I wasn't part of the refugee team, I would never be able to chase my dreams. My coach said if I work hard I could go to the Olympics. So that's why I'm taking it seriously.&rdquo;</p>
<p><strong>Bob Ramsak for the IAAF</strong></p>

Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed knows more than most about crossing difficult terrain.

For Tel Aviv’s Alley Runners, success is measured both on and off the track

Athlete Refugee Team fields a squad of six in Doha

Refugee athlete Mohammed: from the edge of survival to full-time runner