Tibetannet

Due to unique geographical influence, many long-distance Olympic running champions have come from the African plateaus of Kenya and Ethiopia. But in recent years, an Olympic athlete has emerged from the Tibetan Plateau, where running events have made rapid progress.

Photo shows the Tibet Autonomous Region Sports Bureau performs for Tobgye (left), offering a white khada. 

On August 5, Tobgye left Lhasa and embarked on his journey to Rio, representing the Chinese track and field team in the marathon event at the Rio Olympics. This is the second time in 28 years that a Tibetan athlete will participate in the Olympics, but the first time for one to participate in track and field events.

"I love running,” Tobgye said. “After entering the sports academy, running in the Olympics became my dream.”

Students at the Tibet Autonomous Region Sports Technology School perform for Tobgye.

Tobgye was born in 1994 in a village outside Lhasa, Tibet to a family that grew barley and raised yaks. From very early on, the boy who loved to be active showed promise in long-distance running. The first impression the boy from the quiet Tibetan village gives to other people is that he is unaffected, honest, and soft-spoken. Even in front of the media, he is shy and reserved.

Kelsang Tsering, Tobgye’s first teacher and coach, said that ability to adapt to the high altitude has given Tibetan children strong heart and lung functions, developing an innate superiority in stamina-based events, “And middle-range running is a difficult event, you need strong willpower. I think ethnic minorities’ mindsets are more pure, which is better in terms of mentality.”

In 2009, Tobgye entered the Tibet Sports Academy and began training in long-distance running, after which he began to stand out at the National Youth Championships and international competitions. Benefitting from the Chinese Track and Field Association’s 2011 “Plateau Talent Development Plan”, over the last three years Tobgye has received numerous opportunities to train in Africa and has participated in the Asian Games, Asian Championships, Beijing Track and Field World Championships, and the IAAF Diamond League, gradually transforming from a child cowherd to a national top-notch athlete.

"For three consecutive years in the plateau of Africa, I found that Tibetan children are similar to African children in lifestyle, body type, and other ways, which is very suitable for the development of middle- and long-distance running events,” Kelsang Tsering said.

For a long time, men’s middle- and long-distance running events were the weak points of China’s track and field, especially in the 5,000 and 10,000 meter events. Previously, Tobgye specialized in the 5,000 and 10,000 meter, but since 2015, he began to change to the marathon event, in order to realize his dream of participating in the Olympics.

On August 5, Tobgye left Lhasa and embarked on his journey to Rio, representing the Chinese track and field team in the marathon event at the Rio Olympics. Photo: Tobgye (right) and his coach, Kelsang Tsering.

At the Chinese track and field trials in March of this year, Tobgye, who was participating in the marathon event for the first time, ran a time of 2 hours 13 minutes and 16 seconds, earning the second-best national and sixth-best world qualifying time, successfully earning a spot on the three-man squad for the 2016 Rio Olympics Chinese sports delegation track and field marathon team. The other two men, Dong Guojian and Zhu Renxue, both come from Yunnan, on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau.

At last year’s Beijing Track and Field World Championships, Tobgye expressed that Tibetan athlete’s endurance is better, but that other athletes are faster and stronger. It was in these areas that he needed to increase his training and improve.

Tobgye takes a group photo.

From May 30 of this year, Tobgye traveled to Nyingchi for his final Olympics preparations, training for 67 days. Kelsang Tsering said that Tobgye can complete flatland training requirements at the 2,960-meters-high training base in Nyingchi. “Running 38 kilometers in Nyingchi, he needs to reach an average speed of 3 minutes 6 seconds per kilometer before he will be able to compete with the top world athletes for the final sprint. Tobgye’s current condition is better than his Olympic trials. We are all confident in him.”

Not only acting as his technical coach, Kelsang Tsering is also Tobgye’s “clothes and food parent”. “It is hard to become acclimatized to foreign food and drink. No matter where my athletes go, I will always bring plateau yak meat for them to eat, as well as tsampa and butter tea. After I feed them some boiled yak meat, their faces quickly recover. I never let them eat out for fear of them eating prohibited food.”