History has been told of Uganda’s first Olympic gold medal in the sprints at the Olympic games in 1972 that was won by John Akii Bua in the Men’s 400-meter hurdles.
Later, during the 1996 Atlanta Games, Davis Kamoga briefly revived Uganda’s sprinting legacy by securing a bronze in the 400 meters.
Since then Uganda has struggled to produce sprinters capable of competing at the Olympic level. No male sprinter from Uganda has participated in the Olympics since Kamoga’s bronze medal in 1996.
All the five Uganda’s additional Olympic medals have come from long-distance runners in 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, and marathon, and Peruth Chemutai’s 3000-meter steeplechase gold in Tokyo.
However, this long wait will end when USA-based sprinter Tarsis Orogot competes at the Stade de France for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Orogot is the sole sprinter among the 21-man athletics team announced by the Uganda Athletics Federation for the 33rd edition of the summer games.
Orogot’s participation marks the end of a 28-year absence of male Ugandan sprinters at the Olympics. Specifically, he will compete in the 200 meters, making him the first Ugandan to do so in 32 years, since Francis Ogola at the 1992 Barcelona Games.
In Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Uganda went with one sprinter; Shida Leni, and she was the first Ugandan to compete in the sprints at the Olympics since Justine Bayigga featured at the 2008 Beijing events. Unfortunately, she didn’t make it to the semi-finals of the 400m race.
In fact, Leni had initially failed to beat the Olympic qualifying mark of 51.35 seconds over the 400m distance, but she qualified for the summer Tokyo games by her global ranking over the one-lap distance by World Athletics.
This shows how not-so-well the country has been doing at the sprints. All this burden will be carried by Tarsis Orogot, the sole Ugandan sprinter at the games when he takes the stage to compete in the 200-meter race The 21-year-old hopes to change the narrative.
“Just a boy with a dream,” is what Orogot calls himself. He qualified for the Paris games in April when he ran a National Record and Personal Best of 19.90 in 200m at the Tom Jones Memorial Classic in Gainesville, Florida.
He has spent the last three weeks in Paris preparing for the Paris Games, which begin on July 26, and has competed in two 200m races on the Wanda Diamond League (DL) circuit in the last ten days.
His latest performance was a third-place finish during the Herculis meeting in Monaco, where he posted 20.32 seconds in third place behind Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo who won the race in 19.87 seconds, and Dominican Republic’s Alexander Ogando who came second in 20.02 seconds.
Tarsis Orogot was born in Soroti but grew up mostly in Kampala.
He participated in rugby at his early age but with guidance of his coach he switched to athletics sprints. He won the first race he competed in at the age of 16 then began training for sprints from Nairobi in 2019 full time.
Orogot then left for Alabama USA ahead of the 2021-22 school year to purse his athletics career.
