There’s no easy path to the Olympics, but for refugee athletes, qualifying for the famed international event is even more difficult. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) The Mind-Boggling Stats of the 2025 Leadville 100 about who can join the Refugee Olympic Team. “The Right To Race,” a 30-minute documentary released today, on World Refugee Day, chronicles the story of 2022 Diamond League champion Dominic Lobalu’s race to gain entry to the world stage.
We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article distance runners in the world. Born in Sudan in 1998, the runner was orphaned at just nine years of age. In 2017, he fled his home country to join the Athlete Refugee Team in Nairobi, Kenya, before seeking asylum in Switzerland in 2019.
“The Right To Race”—captured by Swiss sportswear company, On, written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Richard Bullock—details Lobalu’s rise to the running world stage.
The film highlights Lobalu’s relationship with Swiss coach Markus Hagmann. The two met right shortly after the runner took refuge in Switzerland and have quickly become family. “His English was not very good, his German was zero, so we tried to get along together,” Hagmann says in the documentary. “Running is like an international language. You don’t have to talk; you have to run. So I let him run.” According to Hagmann, it only took 100 meters to realize that Lobalu had a gift for the sport.
After training Lobalu for a few weeks, Coach Hagmann entered the middle-distance runner in a “small race” where Lobalu broke the course record by a full minute, “running in his normal shorts, some shoes I’d never seen before for running,” says Hagmann. From there, Lobalu’s running career took off. He dethroned some of the world’s best athletes from their one-secure spots at the front of the pack, including Ugandan We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.
Throughout the film, Lobalu and Hagmann reflect on the difficulty of gaining entry into the Olympics as a refugee athlete. The Swiss Athletic Federation has asked the World Athletics Nationality Review Panel to grant Lobalu a spot on the refugee team, which would him to compete for Switzerland in the 2023 World Championship in Budapest and the 2024 Olympics in Paris. He’s currently awaiting the decision.
“My dream is to compete in the Olympics. That is my dream that I focus on,” says Lobalu in the documentary. “It doesn’t matter when, but I will try my best to get there and also send the message to the other refugees that anything is possible.”
You can watch the short film “The Right to Race” here. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.
Kells McPhillips is a health and wellness journalist living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Runner's World, Kells McPhillips is a health and wellness journalist living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in, Well+Good, Fortune, Shape, and others.
