EUGENE. Ore. -- When Lopez Lomong finished speaking with a group of reporters after qualifying Friday for the final in the 1,500 meters, he said, "Happy Fourth of July."
Lomong was not the only athlete in the U.S. Olympic track and field trials who earned the right to represent his adopted country in Beijing.
But if he paid a little more attention than most to the significance of competing on Independence Day, it has to do with Lomong's realizing every day just how incredible his liberty is.
"I came a long way, for sure," Lomong said, "from running through the wilderness to save my life, and now I am doing this for fun."
Lomong has repeatedly told the story of that journey since his exploits as a high school runner caught the attention of the Syracuse Post-Standard in 2003.
The story is even more compelling now that the Sudanese refugee made the 2008 U.S. Olympic team by finishing third Sunday in the 1,500. The other two 1,500 men joining Lomong on the U.S. Olympic team, winner Bernard Lagat, from Kenya, and runner-up Leonel Manzano, from Mexico, also are immigrants.
"We have something in common," Lomong said. "We came different ways, and now America has united us."
So he will go to the Summer Games in the country whose involvement in the latest humanitarian crisis in Sudan has led many to question why China should be the host of the Summer Games.
Lomong, 23, is a member of Team Darfur, a global coalition of athletes using the focus on the Beijing Olympics to urge China to exert its influence on the Sudanese government to alleviate the suffering in the country's Darfur region. Sudan uses income from oil sold to China to buy arms, some of which are used by militias that have inflicted terror on Darfur.
"I need to send the message as an athlete from Sudan," Lomong said. "I am worried about the kids who are dying in Darfur, kids who don't have the dream they could be good athletes or Olympians or doctors, because they will be running away from their village, separated from their families."
Lomong, a Boya tribesman, lived those horrors. The only difference from those in Darfur is his came from a civil war between the Arab north and Black African south of the country, where his family farmed and raised cattle in the village of Kimotong.
